Hidden Figures

Before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, a team of mathematicians known as "human computers" worked out the flight paths that made such feats possible. Among them was a group of gifted African-American women. They were kept apart from their white colleagues and known as the "colored computers", and with pencil and paper they wrote the equations that helped send rockets and astronauts into space.

Hidden Figures follows their story from the Second World War through NASA's golden age. Along the way it touches on the civil rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War and the women's rights movement.

Margot Lee Shetterly weaves the broader history of humanity's greatest adventure together with the personal stories of five courageous women whose work changed the world for good.