Katharine MooreRecensioni

Powerful story by very bright woman. She overcame a lot. It looks like she raised a very nice family. Still hard to believe all of the racism that went on in America and that even what’s going on in my lifetime.

I first learned about Katherine Johnson in the movie and book "Hidden Figures". I've had this book on my TBR list and finally got to its place on the list. I learned quite a bit about sections of history that I didn't know before (NACA/NASA and the space race; the Civil Rights movement, etc.)

I admire that there were people (men and women) who could do these computations by hand (prior to mechanical computers--I say that because I remember in "Hidden Figures" being confused when they called people computers because today that term is used more for machines). Numbers and math are not my forte so it's amazing to me that people can do that. I never thought much about the math that would be needed to get people to and from space until "Hidden Figures".

I appreciated learning more about Katherine's formative years and family as well as her education, career track, and experiences.

Autobiography of Katherine Johnson, of Hidden Figures fame. Born in 1918, she lived 101 years and truly led a remarkable life. This book tells of her early life in West Virginia, how her father ensured education for all his children, early influences in developing her gifts in mathematics, and how she ended up working in America’s space program. All this occurred in the face of widespread racial prejudice before civil rights legislation was passed. This book covers more than her life. She puts her experiences into the context of significant historical events of the 20th century. She overcame many barriers and endured multiple personal tragedies. We get a sense for her intelligence, humility, sense of humor, love for family, and perseverance. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. I found it inspirational.

Katherine Johnson shot to fame with the moving Hidden Figures. This is her story in her own words. Growing up in West Virginia she was taught to value education and sacrifice for family. A gifted student, she excelled at mathematics and found a job at NASA as a human computer. She worked on the calculations for many spaceflights and was universally trusted by the astronauts.

Although this book was slow at times, Mrs. Johnson led a fascinating life. It was wonderful to read about her accomplishments in such an elite field. Overall, 4 out of 5 stars.

For some reason the audiobook is just $2.84 on Downpour.com while it's $15-24 everywhere else. The download from my library was glitchy so I got a better copy since this memoir was too good to give up on. Katherine Johnson's life truly was a remarkable journey, from a West Virginia farm to NASA's Langley Research Center where she performed mathematical calculations for the Apollo space program. Her story included the history of the space race and civil rights movement but what stood out was her love of family and her determination to follow her dreams in education and in her career.

What a lovely book, that looked into the personal life of Katherine G. Johnson, who rose to fame through the "Hidden Figures" book and movie. She was an extremely intelligent, but humble person and this look at the world through her eyes was an absolute joy to listen to.

This is the memoir of Katherine Goble Johnson, who was one of the women showcased in the book and movie Hidden Figures. Johnson was a brilliant mathematician who graduated from high school at 16 and made her way to NASA, where she calculated launch and orbit trajectories for the U.S. space program in the 1960s and helped put Apollo 11 on the Moon. Famously, she was also the person that John Glenn wanted to have cross-check the figures put out by the then-new-fangled computer for his orbital mission.

This book was written in collaboration with two of Johnson’s daughters, Joylette and Katherine (known as Kathy). Johnson’s voice is unmistakeable throughout as she talks about all aspects of her life: family, work, school, church, and the civil rights movement. She lived to be 101 and saw a lot of change in her life—one fact that struck me was that she was 10 years old when sliced bread was invented! To pack all of those changes, developments, and advances into 256 pages is an impressive feat.

I would recommend this if you’ve read or seen Hidden Figures, are interested in the history of the space program, and/or want to read about awesome women.

Wow. What a book. What a life. What a woman!!

Simply impressive and inspirational.

Katharine Moore, who died at the ripe old age of 103 in 2001, was a published author of fiction and non-fiction, but her Victorian sequel to Jane Austen's Emma remained a private piece of up-market fan fiction until after her death. Available free to download online - though plagued with irritating formatting errors when uploaded to Kindle - Donwell Abbey is a well written and creative vision of Highbury forty years later that must appeal to every fan of Austen's novel.

In 1858, Emma is the dowager mistress of Donwell Abbey, surrounded by an extended family of children, grandchildren, great nieces and nephews and in-laws. Poor old Mr Knightley has been dispatched once again (granted, he would be in his eighties, but why is living so long an impossibility?), overcome by the death of his son and heir, another George, who died in battle during the Crimean War. Young George's widow, Anna Weston (daughter of Emma's old governess), and her daughter Emily live on at Donwell, and Emma's daughter Jane, married to Charles Wentworth from Persuasion (a Tilney also adds to the cast of thousands), has produced a vast array of cousins who also come to stay. Not to mention the descendants of John Knightley at Hartfield! To be honest, I completely lost track of the family tree after connecting Emily to Anna to Emma. In the foreword, Moore's characters are described as 'phantom' grandchildren, created with apology as 'a tribute to characters so vital that they insisted on having descendants of some kind, however unworthy'. I didn't find the third generation of Knightleys, Eltons or Churchills unworthy, nor does the story lack in detail and Austenesque humour, but Donwell Abbey falls flat compared to Emma. In Austen's Highbury, the reader gets to know all the familiar faces, from Hartfield to Miss Bates, but I couldn't even keep track of the Knightleys in the sequel!

The story is basically about the advance of mid-Victorian industrialisation into the rural England of the Regency, and the changing social aspect of the nation as a whole. Old families like the Knightleys are being challenged by nouveaux riches like the Eltons - Augustus Elton is behind a plan to cut a railway line through the parkland of Donwell Abbey, and wants to marry Emma's granddaughter into the bargain. Moore's characters seek to live 'untrammelled by the traditions and loyalties of the older generation', though to my mind, the Victorians were far more rigidly class-bound than Regency society. Emily, Euphrasia (don't ask), and Lily Elton also defy traditional gender roles, either by becoming 'new women' or living independently.

An interesting blend of Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell, liberally seasoned with quotes and historical references, plus an epistolary chapter or two for Victorian authenticity. Reading the pdf online is probably easier, but there is no reason not to give this harmeless continuation a try - it's quick, light and free!

> Joylette got more good news—she had landed the job at NASA. She joined me at Langley just four days after her secret wedding. My oldest daughter was now a mathematician, like me. She worked at NASA, like me

> I worked closely at Langley with engineer Al Hamer on trajectory calculations for the trip to the moon and contingency plans in case of disaster, including how to navigate the spacecraft back home using the stars as a guide if there were an electrical failure. Al and I examined these and other technical topics in four papers that we would publish together between 1963 and 1969.

> The two of us even wrote a research paper, doing some preliminary work for an Earth-to-Mars trajectory. The paper, titled “Simplified Interplanetary Guidance Procedures Using Onboard Optical Measurements,” was published in May 1972.