PICTURED | Karen Bertsch photography by M. Rickard
Karen’s Book Review What do women read? Or maybe the better question is, who do women read for? We read for our jobs, or to help us parent better, or be better spouses, or for beauty tips and recipes. Mostly we tuck our reading time into stolen moments. But what do we read that lifts us up or inspires and bonds us?
Hidden Figures, by Margot Lee Shetterly, is well worth the commitment and guarantees to inspire. Even if you saw the movie, the book delves deeper into the details of the lives of these brilliant, courageous, unstoppable women. The odds were truly against them. School books were old and outdated; many schools were closed to them: perseverance, perseverance, and more perseverance! They possessed hard-fought-for educations, determination, and valuable skills, so NASA beckoned. These pioneers were human computers--using adding machines, pencils, and slide rules to get our space program launched, all while wearing skirts, and heels, and navigating which bathroom they could use. They helped each other, standing shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm. With progress came computers, and these women saw the future and adapted. They learned how to program. They went over, around, and through the barriers they all experienced. They looked out for each other both personally and professionally. Author Shetterly is, herself, an accomplished woman: an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow and the recipient of a Virginia Foundation for the Humanities grant for her research into the history of women in computing. She knew many of the women in Hidden Figures. The book is well written and insightful.
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