This month we are reading Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee-Shetterly.

Set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South and the civil rights movement, the true story of NASA’s African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America’s space program—and whose contributions were previously unheralded.

Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as “Human Computers,” calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women. Segregated from their white counterparts by Jim Crow laws, these “colored computers,” as they were known, used slide rules, adding machines, and pencil and paper to support America’s fledgling aeronautics industry, and helped write the equations that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.

As ever it doesn't matter if you've read half the book, all of it or just the first 10 pages, all are welcome. Come and join in the conversation.