The whole point of the book being to shed light on deserving women forgotten by history, Hidden Figures does too good a job and ends up reading like the prologue to several more in-depth biographies.
I am glad I read their stories, but man is the intersection of misogyny and racism hard to take, even while Shetterly does an admirable job of framing it as yet another obstacle each of the formidable women overcomes instead of an insurmountable barrier. She does this while illustrating that the only reason these women thrived was due to amazing intellect AND adaptability, in part by honestly assessing the environment they worked in and against, but also touching on stories like the likely schizophrenic woman who had a breakdown and was institutionalized prior to the creation of NASA.
I feel like each of the computers deserved her own biography, but for the book as it exists, I would have preferred to hear more about their time in NASA once it was formed, or a more cohesive timeline for each of the women charged with the computations essential for space flight. The book as it stands gives us an incomplete picture and the hidden figures of the title remain partly in shadow.
I read this book on my kindle and was startled when it ended because the page count showed I still had about 1/4 of the book left (it was taken up by reference material). But I agree, it did feel like we didn’t get the full picture.
I assumed this book was about the same three women from the movie but I get the impression there were even more women mentioned in this one? It seems like three is probably the limit for being able to give a decent amount of attention to each person for joint biographies and even then, they could always each have their own books.