Shadow Before the Flame

“If you have ever seen the newsreel footage—easily available on YouTube—of the massive Hindenburg airship attempting to dock in Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937, the image is likely seared into your memory: the German zeppelin suddenly explodes in a gigantic inferno, screams are heard, and the announcer is near tears. Catherine Grace Katz re-creates these moments and the aftermath in poignant detail, but what makes Shadow Before the Flame so good is her history of the zeppelin . . . This is narrative history at its best.”
—Air Mail

“[An] ambitious chronicle of the disaster . . . When Katz’s Hindenburg is churning over the ocean, her narrative soars. We marvel with Benny Spah, a vaudeville performer who documents the trip on a small movie camera. We feel the pain of Bert Dolan, a perfume executive who has boarded the Hindenburg without telling his family so he can surprise his wife for Mother’s Day. We empathize with Ernst Lehmann, a famous airship captain who is flying away from one tragedy — and into another. And we are thrilled to stand on the ground with Herb Morrison, a radio announcer who is accidentally about to capture everything. He’s the one who will soon cry, ‘Oh, the humanity. . . .’ The people on the Hindenburg aren’t setting out to make history; they are just caught up in it. Katz notes that they are ‘like the cast of characters in one of Agatha Christie’s popular mysteries.’ Some will live, some will not and we will read to the end, wanting to know who, if anyone, will emerge from the flames to tell us what happened on the last flight of the Hindenburg.”
—Keith O’Brien, The New York Times Book Review

“By bringing new light to the Hindenburg disaster, Catherine Grace Katz has given us an absorbing tale of ambition, technology, culture, and geopolitics. Largely forgotten or only dimly recalled, it is fundamentally a human story that tells us much about the epochal twentieth century and the early hours of what we now call globalization. A stirring read.”
—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winner and New York Times bestselling author of American Struggle

“Catherine Grace Katz is an elegant writer and a highly skilled researcher. In Shadow Before the Flame, this potent combination gives readers a fascinating true story that will keep them glued to the page. I ate it up!”
—Candice Millard, New York Times bestselling author of River of the Gods

“The Hindenburg catastrophe was a powerful metaphor for the conflagration was to befall the whole world only twenty-eight months later, and Catherine Katz has put the disaster in its historical context superbly, with deep scholarship, a pacy narrative and gripping insights into the effects it had on those passengers and crew who somehow, incredibly, survived. Her tale has the readability of a thriller, but also the factual background of a profoundly researched history book. A remarkable achievement.”
—Andrew Roberts, New York Times bestselling author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny

“A gripping, sensitive account of one of the most infamous disasters in modern history. In meticulous detail, Catherine Grace Katz reveals the human side of the Hindenburg story and also the fascinating role the great airship—and its spectacular demise—played in Nazi propaganda and the birth of broadcast news.”
—Adam Higginbotham, National Book Critics Circle Award-winner and New York Times bestselling author of Challenger

“An enthralling account of hubris and calamity, dismay and disbelief, and survival and endurance, set against growing anti-Semitism in Germany and rising international tensions propelling Europe towards war only two years later. Superbly structured, deftly plotted, and stylishly written, and mingling human stories with technological expertise. Catherine Grace Katz is the first historian to produce a definitive account of the infamous Hindenburg catastrophe.”
—Sir David Cannadine, author of Queen Elizabeth II

“Katz offers an immersive revisitation of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster. [C]inematic . . . an impressive reevaluation of how the abrupt, tragic end to the hopeful vision of ‘mankind connected by the skies’ impacted the world’s consciousness.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[E]xpansive, illuminating. . . . A talented historian’s engrossing narrative of an iconic disaster in the sky.”
—Kirkus (starred review)

“In this well-researched and exhaustively detailed book, Katz doesn’t tell a simple disaster narrative but presents a holistic account of how the Hindenburg functioned as a symbol of futuristic wonder, fascist propaganda, and nostalgia. It will particularly appeal to readers interested in pre-World War II history.”
—Library Journal

“A well-researched title certain to thrill fans of WWII and aviation history.”
—Booklist