Women Surrounded by Water: A Memoir
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Hidden Figures

In this riveting piece of NASA history, before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.

Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women—pioneering women in STEM and some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in the South’s segregated public schools, they were called into service during the labor shortages of World War II, when America’s aeronautics industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff. Suddenly, these overlooked math whizzes had a shot at jobs worthy of their skills, and they answered Uncle Sam’s call, moving to Hampton, Virginia and the fascinating, high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory.

Even as Virginia’s Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley’s all-black “West Computing” group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, a foundational moment in space exploration history, and complete domination of the heavens.

Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA’s greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country’s future.

More Adult, Non-Juvenile Books

  • From the risky backstreets of sixteenth-century Paris to the unpredictable suburbs of mid-twentieth century New York, the stakes couldn’t be higher when, 400 years apart, Milly, Lysbette, and Charlotte each face a reality where the spread of ideas are feared and every effort is made to suppress them.

  • The devastatingly self-aware, laugh-out-loud daily chronicle of Bridget’s permanent, doomed quest for self-improvement.

  • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • Twelve short stories that mark a turning point in the work of “one of the true American masters" (The New York Review of Books).

  • Dynamic and debonair, Cesar Romero was best known for creating the role of the Joker in the 1960s Batman television series. As the first actor to play Batman and Robin’s villainous nemesis, Romero established the character’s giddy, manic tone and the distinctive laugh that subsequent actors like Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, and Joaquin Phoenix would use as the starting points in their own Oscar-nominated (Nicholson) and Oscar-winning (Ledger and Phoenix) performances. As a closeted gay man of Latin American descent, Romero gracefully faced many personal challenges while maintaining his suave public image and starring opposite legends ranging from Shirley Temple to [...]