[inaudible conversations].

>> may have your attention please. take your seats. the presentation is about to begin. before we get started like you to be aware most likely a question and answer period at the end of the presentation. when it is time for theat questions and answers go to one of the two microphones on either side of the stage, line up to ask a question. to begin our presentation, i would like to introduce eric digins, a tv critic for npr. [applause] >> how are you doing? thanks so much for joining us here. we really appreciate it. as was said, i'm eric degins, tv critic for national public radio. so of course i should be talking to a author. i've written a lot about race in media and also, i interviewed taraji p. henson for the smithsonian. we have a little bit in common here. so our esteemed guests, the daughter of a nasa scientist and english professor?

>> yes. >> virginia native. you worked in investment banking? >> that was my first job out of school. >> wow.. also had a magazine for expats in mexico? >> mexico. >> inside mexico. started working on "hidden figures" in 2010. became "new york times" best circle. spawned a move that that was as car nominated. march margo lee shetterly. [applause] i heard you gave an amazing speech last night where you talked a a little bit about charlottesville and race.tt could you give us a little taste what you talked about there, how it compares to what you talk about in the book. >> yeah. the thing that we talked a a little bit about what i started out doing which was working inin investment banking out of school and really when i was growing up

that seemed like progress and the future and very protagonist way life, career to have, like very powerful. history for me, it was something that always felt, you know, i think as an african-american, always so heavy and connected to this past which is usually is taught in schools slavery, martin luther king, now there is obama. a very long but extremely narrow arc of history and so during the course of writing hidden figures, what i really came to understand was how powerful it is to be able to tell a story and to write a story and to telt your own story, to be the protagonist in your own story. as opposed to telling a story where you are the passive recipient of history. and so you know, i live in

charlottesville, virginia.ow i went to the university of virginia but recently moved there and, you know this entire, you know, issue of the statues and you know, the white supremacist marchs, all of that stuff has been happening since i moved there and, you know, i think for me, we're very focused on the presence of the statues and the meaning of the statues, you know, what they have come to symbolize. i think part of the issue also is that, those statues, they also represent an absence of a counternarrative. that there is the slavery narrative. there are these confederate statues, but in terms of a diversity and a richness of african-american stories, there are very few, and there are very few which african-americans are

protagonists and these storieses which you are allowed to be a protagonist matter. each of us is a protagonist in our own life. we see ourselves as people with agency, you know. that i think we love stories about superheroes and kings.st these stories make us feel powerful. >> yeah. >> so i think that it is really, it is about the presence of the apartheid and the presence of the racial terror and the slavery that is also about the absence of the counternarrative. i really see that one of the jobs of bringing, bridging some of these divides is bringing forward these stories that have always been there. the people have been there. the history is there. the stories are what we need to tell now.s >> right. for people who may have been under a rock for the last year or so ""hidden figures"," this

amazing book about these black women who served as human computers working both the agency, that preceded nasa, and for nasa, crunching all of these complex math and complex numbers that were used to first develop the aerodynamics for planes and then later to, for spaceflight and the moonshot. i saw in the book you said it isn't hidden history but unseen history. everybody asks you why don't we know this but i'm going to askis you, why don't we know this and why is it unseen? are we afraid to look at it? were we still too busy lionizinp nasa and john glenn and people like that? why was it unseen? >> i think the primary reason this history is unseen because this work was women's work. you know, and that not just at nasa.

there was this cadre of african-american women working at nasa langley. they were part of a much larger cohort of woman from all background doing work at all the different nasa centers. there were women computers working in the army and the navy. they were working at bell labs which many of you may know is the precursor to at&t and basically founded the communications revolution, cell phones and things like that. c i mean virtually everywhere you found technological progress that required number crunching and reduction of data there were women. there were rooms full of women kind of like a living excel spreadsheet doing math. it was considered subprofessional work. it was very necessary but literally the women at nasa they were classified as

subprofessionals.h which meant they were above clerical employees. they were not as high in the hierarchy as the men who were engineers who were considered professional employees. so i think that's a large reason why this work was invisible. they were kind of the equivalent of our computers sitting on our desks doing the work today and yet without them, all of these advances would not have been possible. >> now i'm interested in how you decided to focus on this because i know of course you were surrounded by these people when you were growing up. and, you know, i've done panels where i talk to people, they goo i have this idea. then i made it a reality by doing x, y and z, i think to myself, wait a minute, i want to hear how you had the idea, because that to me is the key. deciding -- i mean there were plenty of other people grew up around these people. in your neighborhood when you were growing up, i'm sure everybody knew these stories.up what made you decide this was

worth a book? >> i told the story before, it is interesting, the moment, there is a very specific moment when "hidden figures," what would become hidden figures became into existence. interestingly came out of the moment between the two most important men in my life, my father and my husband. we had gone back to visit my parents christmas seven years ago now. we had run into a woman who had worked at nasa many years as a computer and you know, that sort of sparked this conversation of my dad sort of you know, going into this speech about what she had done and the other women and catherine johnson, she calculated the launch window fot the astronauts in a very casual way. >> wait a minute. that moment where the needle slips off the record.

>> i didn't have that moment. i didn't hear the needle slip off the record, you know, because i had heard a lot of those stories before. i had grown up there. i had known these women but had known them as my parents' colleagues and friend. but the needle definitely slipped off the record for my house who is not from hansen. he was like, wait a minute, can you please replay that for me and why i haven't heard the story before? for me it was a moment looking at the community, the people, nasa, this very extraordinary kind of place that i had grown up, that was also extremely normal and ordinary but looking, being able to see past what was so normal to me, say, wow, that is pretty remarkable. >> yeah. and what's amazing to me about the book, the level of detailai you're able to bring forth about these peoples lives. i feel like, when dorothy vaughn

is walking in to teach at the high school, i'm walking right along with her. you're able to describe what that journey was like. how did you get that level of detail.ho how did you find the what the place smelled like or thee landmarks she passed walking into the high school? >> doing the research, i loved it, i loved it. i really, the kind of book thate i wanted to write was the kind of book that i loved reading which is really detailed narrative nonfiction, where you're so emersed into this dream and this life that you lose yourself. you go into this time machine. and so i, i mean the sources, there were so many some different kind of sources. first of all, interviews with people. catherine johnson, who just turned 99 years old, really amazing. i was very fortunate --

>> at that raja p henson? for those that didn't read the book -- at -- >> not just her life but dorothy vaughn, for example. the relationship between dorothy vaughn and women that worked for her. there were employee newsletters starting in 1942 for the langley research center which was called the langley aeronautical laboratory back then. black newspaper, amazing source of information. the description of mary jackson's wedding dress in the book came from an article in the norfolk journal and guide. the level of detail in the black newspaper.he >> like telling our own story. >> it is amazing, absolutelyabsu extraordinary. of the nasa history office and langery research center done a excellent job with wind tunnel

records, seating charts, photos of offices and work groups, teams of people. it was, you know, so i really, i loved that part of it. if i, if i didn't have to eventually turn in a book i would probably still be doing that research. >> now i heard you already, you sold the rights to be made into a movie while you were writing it in man, i'm scared of you. i am scared of you.i am sca y [laughter]. buy movie rights of a book you hadn't even finished writing yet?t?ti >> i actually hadn't even started writing. [laughter]g, >> i want her agent. who is her agent?e] [laughter]. [applause] >> i tell you i have a very good literary agent. this is makenzie brady watson. young, very smart. >> excuse me. >> and she was the one, who represented my book proposal.

sold it to heart per collins. she is the one basically facilitated getting into the hands of the producer for hidden figures and donna read it. she immediately felt a sense of mission i think. she really made her job made her job championing this as a movie. she made it her mission. it is not a usual, it was sort of a lightning strike set of circumstances that happened with the book and the movie. >> wow. what i love about the book, inle addition to all in addition too all the great detail of the women, you're talking about all those things with the narrative. one of which there is periods

where there is progress on civil rights in america, often because america is threatened, world war ii, world war ii, the cold war. then these periods of backlash where black soldiers are coming back from the war and they get beat up. this team to put people back in their place. talk a little bit how those themes work in "hidden figures" and why it was so important to make sure we had a sense of the sweep of history of that way. >> yeah. i think again, you know, a lot of it came from my interest and my preference for these epic narratives, you know. that these women had that epic narrative. so it wasn't enough to either to show their lives or simply show the history. i wanted their lives directly connected to the sweep of history. the thing about these women they in so many ways their lives were connected to the big history. you know, not just for them working at nasa starting in

world war ii.ar but like for example, catherine johnson was one of three black students to integrate the b graduate schools inest west virginia. dorothy vaughn worked at a math teacher before she went to nasa. she worked at a school in farmville, virginia, that filed a lawsuit that was eventually incorporated into the brown versus board of education suit. that school system was shut down by the state of virginia, rather than comply with the board decision and enat that great. so, it was, it really was fascinating to me to look at these sweeps of the history and see how this opening for all of these women happened during world war ii. because of the need for labor. and pause of the external threat and that we would see, you known these periods of backlash. for example, when, after brown

when virginia closed its schools.nia cl so you know, i wanted to understand how the bilge picture second quarter -- big picture circumstances affected individual lives of these people and how they responded to those circumstances. >> yeah. i also love the idea of looking at it, for example, during the cold war, when all of these countries were fighting off their colonial oppressors anda pressure it brought on america it show, we're not that bad. we'll strike segregation instead of going with the communists in. bulgaria, liberia, or cuba. you showed how that fed into their stories which i thought was amazing. >> the time of sputnik, 1957, when soviets put sputnik, satellite into space, thatat kicked off a space race version

of the cold war, that was a fascinating time. i mean this was a time of mccarthyism. it was a time, you know the sputnik obviously, the excitement of going into space. the fear that maybe the russians are spying on us. it is the time that little rock happened in 1957. so one of the most, i mean just unbelievable documents i found that i put in the book that connected those two things is that the russians would always publish a timetable where the sputnik satellite was overflying during, sort of orbit around the earth. >> wow. >> so i found this w "washington post" article that, that showed that the russians published, when it was flying over little rock, arkansas. so, you know, very direct connections between the domestic turmoil in the united states and

this international, global, battle between the united states and the soviet union. >> and this idea that because of segregation, and because people were oppressed, that america was holding itself back. maybe one reason, the russians got sputnik up earlier is because they gave women more agency as engineers in the soviet union? >> there were many, many more female engineers in engineering school there than there were here in the united states whereh women were still having problemv even getting admitted to engineering programs. yeah, i think one of the things that was, that was very clear during the research into "hidden figures," the story is so important, stories we tell ourselves. the stories that we, that we disseminate inside of the country, outside of the country. all of these things affected the decisions that people made. in a very real way.

the government was involved in shaping those stories both internally and externlynally. >> now your book cover as wide swath of history. starts in 1943. comes all the way through to the end of the space program. the "hidden figures" the movieie doesn't do that i went through the whole book looking for kevic costner. i didn't see no kevin costner. so, and i know you said thaw enjoyed the movie, didn't have a problem with it, were you surprised how they chose to tell the story? seems like they conflate ad lot of things and kind of crunched a lot of circumstances together to make the mayor tiff more compelling? >> it was a real interesting experience of this whole hidden figures thing. while i was writing my first book, learning how to do that. >> her first book. her first book.

oh, my gosh.lause] [applause] >> you know, i was also gettinge a course what it takes to adapt a book for film and how you tell a story through film and how you tell a story, sort of a difference between fact and truth. you know.ruth, yo there are a lot of facts that are conflated in the movie but what i really appreciated about the final product of the movie,d is that it is very true. it is very true to the nature of the women. it is very true to the circumstances. it is very true to nasa, and that sense of what it was like during the early days of the space race but it was really hard for me. first of all i wrote the book from 1943 to 1969. i thought, why can't you make a movie from 1943 to 1969?

>> or a tv show from a critic. >> it was hard to make a picture to focus on very traumatic moment for catherine john an's life where she calculates the trajectory of john glenn's flight.. it was different seeing elements of the story shifted from one character to another. see things that were created.yo i'm sure anyone who has seen the movie you probably did figure this out, there was no kevin costner character who sledgehammers the colored sign in langley, but ---- >> i was looking. i was in the index. >> yeah. you know, there are moments when you know, i struggled with some of the decisions and -- >> one of the things that struck me, for example, in your book you say, that they basically ended the segregation in nasa,

in' -- if i have at this 8:00. >> in the movie there seems to be segregation. they already stopped that. >> yeah. >> the department wasn't segregated during the time the movie showed? >> yeah. in order to bring together two very traumatic things which is john glenn's orbit al flight and catherine johnson doing the calculations, the end of segregation they were conflated in terms of timelines. >> was there ever a moment they had to break that to you? >> well you know what? i have to say, i know a lot of people who have written books and have them made into movies have different opinions but i had a very positive experience with this and the producer in particular, donna chilatti, who was the producer kept me in the loop. every once in while, 3:00 in the

morning i would be up working to try to finish the draft so i could turn it in. the script would pop up. like latest version of the script. and so, they really did an amazing job i think of keeping me in the loop of honoring my suggestions. really listening to me. and doing all they could to understand and preserve the authenticity of the story, which i was very happy with. >> right. w so the movie comes out and it's very successful. i think it was the highest grossing movie amongst all the movies that were nominated for best picture the year that it came out. your book was a "new york times" best-seller. and then a year later, we have white supremacists marching through virginia who feel like they have been supported by the president of the united states. what do you think?

i mean, on one hand there is a sense this story comes out and people are so hungry for this history and they are so worried about how people have been oppressed and how this history has been oppressed and then a o year later we have people who would be right at home with thed byrds upholding white supremacy, marching down the middle of the street in the town you live in? what do you think of that? >> you know, i mean i think thit is, i think this is america. you know i think a lot of, there has been a lot of commentary after charlottesville that thet town and the state and the country, that this is not who we are. it is who we are, you know. america is a complicated place. >> you can clap for that. [laughter]. >> what i mean is, it is a a complicated place t has been ally indicated place from the -- it has been a complicated place from the beginning.

we have some of the most admired and beautiful and worthy ideals. we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and people are created equal. this is something we navigate by and we believe in here,be fundamentally. and we are always at war witharh the ideal, and the reality of the implementation, you know. and that is, that is, when i say this is america, that struggle is, you know, that is the struggle that we're always facing.weal and so it is, you know, i think that we are, this is a part of that struggle for living up to those ideals and saying what does it take to really support and allow everyone into those ideals? and believing in those ideals? doing what we can to enforces, them and to you know, to spread them.

and i, you know, for me i live, you know, 12 minutes driving from monticello.o. . . for me anyways as an african-american really trying to unite those two things, to say, i.e., you know, both acknowledge the circumstances of slavery in the past than all the happiness that comes with that

and i also embraced them and, you know, and love the beautiful those in the hearts and the ideals and our country in the best of our country. so it's complicated. this is a complicated place, but you know, i think living in the moment it feels like we are living in the history right now. it's all these things and if the moment where the american ideals were calling to us. you and it's like saying can we take these ideals and put them into this in our everyday life. >> we are going to take a few questions, so i'm going to ask if you have a question to line up at one of these two microphones and i will point you

and please make it a question.pl [laughter] [applause] i always feel like the stories of black folks and especially black women in the south get out what you just talk about so if that movie. the wonderful things about our country and also the things that we struggle with, the duality of all of this popular figures.ut it's like folks in the south. >> i am a native virginian. i am a native of the south. i love the south. the south is a complicated place. a lot of these issues that exist everywhere in america are maybe closer to the surface. and southerners have come you know, i guess a reputation of being great lovers of history.

in a thing, you know, embracing even the hard things, likethose really trying to face those hard things that make them also part of who we are as a country and who we are as individuals. and maybe a thing for me, like trying to do that work as an individual and embrace all of those things, even the painful things as part of my heritage as an american, you know, i think within me that is sort of like defusing of all of the conflicts. you know, i want those things to be able to coexist even as difficult things. >> all right. let's start over here. if you can give us your name and your question.loved ie >> hello, my name is debbie greenberg. adventure movie. he gave me insight into my uncle and cousins who grew up in

hampton. now i understand. thank you. >> you should read the book. there's more about it here.somey >> my question, to come in juste a few years after what you portray.t what was the cultural environment? the interface environment and how did that influence you in your outlook? >> i consider myself as having grown-up in a very interesting place and a very wonderful time. so until i started doing the research for this book, and i didn't realize just how close i was to kind of detail and at the desegregation of the schools in virginia because virginia really tried for a long time. when i went to school i went to integrated schools, you know,

black kids than white kids, a lot of vietnamese people lived in the community. so we're hardly come as you know, hampton house was heavily military area in addition to nafta and a number of army, navy bases, airport race, so it really does get a lot of people from a lot of different places. and i think it was a period that the state thing had just happened. people were still up domestic about that. so i feel like i grew up in what to mean what sort of still writing a lot of the optimism for progress and change from the civil rights movement, and from the space race there in hampton. i went to a very kind of normal,

american normal, whatever that is in the popular imagination of public schools with kids from a lot of different back rows. socioeconomic backgrounds. i think this is something that has changed since i was in school that i went to kid who are on public assistance and i i went to school with kids whose parents were quite affluent. i think growing up with this very diverse and not just ethnicity, but a mean in terms economic nationality even was a real privilege. and so, i feel very, very fortunate to have gone to the hampton public schools, got a great education and very much love my hometown. yo [applause]ur >> over here. your name and your question. >> hi, i am katie handler. i was wondering if you considered writing a file in a

straight add weight the murder of 13. >> yeah, the merging their team as a group of women who were being recruited with the idea that they could also be part of the core and add white is an al, african-american who is also, you know, crude into the astronaut corps. those are amazing stories. the thing about hidden figures is, you know, there were so many different fascinating stories and people involved. those are a think very worthy.i i'm actually working on the next book that has to do with nasa. i spend so much time even now reading about people who were in some way involved with this spine of the hidden figures story. i don't have those, but i think

those are stories that we definitely need. >> you could write a book. you did mention i had in theheyn book. your name in your story -- and your question. >> hello, my name is stephen.nci i thought the movie and an audience like this, diverse like this. predominately white. but when it was over, people applauded and people were crying. my wife was crying, the white man next to her was crying, the asian woman next to him was crying. i was wondering what you found about what the folks that the promotion. tears of joy, tears of hope, tears of sadness. what is your thinking on the emotional impact of that story?

>> you know, that is a great question.movi i've seen the movie 10 times in different settings and it has been the same. i seen it where everybody knows people. i've seen it with the people who made it, so many different settings.seit b i think this is -- there are these ideals. there's these things we want to believe about who we are, about who we can be in a faith that may be what that movie does is it shows us an instance of closing the gap between who we are when we fall short in who we are when we stand up and go up to our highest level.sn and it's optimistic. it doesn't shy away from the difficult things, but it doesn't take away the hope.

you need to look the difficultul things squarely in the eye, but you can never take away the hope in you can't deny the progress. even in a moment like now when people are saying there are many challenges facing this country. there have always been these challenges facing the country. we have made a lot of progress and i feel like we need to acknowledge that. even as we look squarely at fairly difficult things, we are humans. we need help. we need happy stories to get up in the morning and give us meaning. i think that is maybe eight. it shows the hard things. we have to see those things and acknowledge them, but we need hope as well and it's a very hopeful movie about people who love what they are doing it for home that becomes a bond. they come from all these different backgrounds, but these

people are passionate about the matter that's very true to who these people are ending enables them to transcend and become very close and that's also verym positive. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> your name and your question. >> my name is and does not say. i wrote down my question because i'm nervous to talk. at the beginning of this talk, you talk about how history was not hidden, but the book he wrote and the movie produced was one way of making the storyamerc visible to much of the american and international public. what are other ways you see

counter narratives being brought to life and how do you think the awareness that these stories will have an effect on the actions that we as america take? >> you now, growing up, i always thought of history is the history of politics and presidents and assorted very big picture history. history is really what all of us, each of us does an history is about community, people and how our lives fit into the great chorus of humanism. and i think that may be sorted in the same way that i ain't science is always seen as thet great individual scientists, you know, einstein and olive theseve great people who have been mostly men in the past. but we don't see how much of

that scientific progress and work is based on the teamwork and people coming together to create something, a giant leap. i think in that same way, we sea these great individuals and we don't look at the people around us. and i think that sounds really simplest day, but looking at thp people around us, grandparents, people who live down the street, why is this monument here andd it's been there for so long and how did it get there. asking these questions about things in our surrounding and saying that we are going to start looking at the history from the ground up as opposed to the history from the top down. i love those stories. they are sorted very human level stories and i think that very

human level view of why things, why things happen is something people are really hungry for. i am dying to go and see the presentation of jd vans who i think is also writing about people in our country from a point of view that we don't always get and people are hungry for and i think there's a lot of similar energy between way people are very interested in hidden figures and interested in hillbilly elegy. i think maybe people see that as a contradiction, but there is quite a lot of similarity between what people are looking for. i think maybe looking from theo bottom up as opposed to the topgallant in terms of history is a great start. >> okay, this'll be our last question, so it better be good.

>> my name is allen weinstein. not quite weinstein. >> now you're really raising the bar. >> in my own way and made a contribution to your emergence of technology and science in my field particularly. i'd like to thank you for your contribution from the point of a white male, not an african american female.qu but when i ask you my question is how did the book differ from the movie in any significant way and what was your role in that if there was a differencee between the book and the movie? what was your role in that difference? >> so, the biggest difference between the book and the movie is the book starts in 1843 and ends in 1969 and the movie is just a sliver, basically takes place from 1957 to 1962.

and because of that, as we talked about, a lot of the timelines and things were mo conflated. i was a consultant on the movie. they would ask these questions. i give them a lot of research.bn but one just sort of to speak a little bit to the math and computer part of it. this book, nasa was about building planes and spaceship and hidden figures is very much about that. because catherine johnson as a mathematician was the central character, they really created a plot in the movie that tinged the viewpoint. this is something i didn't even learn until after the movie was produced in how about these questions about how this

particular part of the description come together. they made this interesting decision to really make it a movie about math as opposed to about the engineering, which in the book is a lot more about engineering them in my new show. >> and about their lives. i wanted to ask you real quickly to talk about the human computer project you are working on. this is something you have continued to past life of the book. can you talk about what you're doing there and how the movie has come out. >> essentially what i was so surprised to discover during the research, is how many women were involved in computing as they talk about before and others see these organizations.

they were to try and catalogueue all the women involved in doing this work in the early days of computing and really and what kind of work they were doing and also to get a snapchat of women in these fields that we can apply to women working in this field today. >> of people want to participatp they can find it online? >> estimate human computer project. >> thanks a lot, guys. really appreciate your questions.s. we ran out of time. i've got to wrap it out. [applause] i do want to thank our esteemed cast, margo shetterly, author of "hidden figures." please enjoy the rest of thehepy festival. thank you very much.

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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> coverage of the senate teamed annual national book festival. that was margo shetterly talking about her book "hidden figures." coming up in just a few minutes, we want to show you the line first.t. this is the line trying to get in to hear jd van talk about hillbilly elegy.

2500 seats are set up in the air. we also ask our marketing folks here and we want to introduce you next. i'm going to cut through here. we want to introduce you next to in ddo bossi. what are you doing here? >> i'm here at the marketing team giving out bookmarks, got some pants. we are also giving out these fantastic bags. if you are here, stop on by, pick one up, fill it up with a lot of books. >> if you don't, always carry books around for groceries as well. it's a very solid dad, veryis or named. this is france's suez or volunteer here. stand up and say hi to america. would you do if c-span when you're not handing out bags? >> i'm the operator if c-span. >> you're an engineer?

>> engineer, yes. >> engineer on hand as well. jd vance will be live on booktv on c-span two hear at the national book festival pier just a few minutes they are sending out.still you can still see the crowd out here. after that, we will be back on our tv sat downstairs here at the convention center. we will have a call and withh david mccullough. u those are a couple of things coming out. a reminder if you want the full schedule for the day, go to our website, booktv.org to schedule us on the right-hand side. everything we are doing today reverses at midnight tonight but also re-airs on monday, labor day. right now, let's go on and in as the room gets filled up, booktv live coverage here on c-span2.

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