This was very inspirational, and I was greatly moved by the story of these women's contributions. Part of me wants to march out and get a mathematics degree and level up, because these women were by far smarter, braver, and harder working than I am!

I will lay the only fault of this book at the publisher's feet and not the author's: It should have been longer. Clearly, by the state of the epilogue, Shetterly had to cut entire portions of this history and other women's roles, and there was no reason to! The main text is only 265 pages long, and believe me, readers would have eaten up another 50 pages.

They should seriously teach this stuff in school. There is no reason on Earth why anyone like me should take 26 years to discover that black women and white women - women, period! - were so critical to aeronautics efforts from the 40's to the 60's. Maybe stop rewinding and rewatching the old history tapes, and teach people that a freaking amazing black woman's math calculations got John Glenn and the first men on the Moon safely back to Earth!

Highly recommended.