A gripping, major new history of the explosion of the “Titanic of the Skies,” the rise of Nazism and the beginning of World War II
For thirty-seven seconds on May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg lit up the sky over Lakehurst, New Jersey in an indelible conflagration that shocked the world and brought the airship era to a close.
In this definitive account, acclaimed historian Catherine Grace Katz brings together little-known research that unveils the disaster as a pivotal moment in time, at the crossroads of the rising tension between Germany (where the Hindenburg’s fateful trip began) and the US in the 1930s, as well as a rapidly changing age of aviation in which the airship had been deemed the future of air travel, a technology that would connect the world. While thirty-six people died in the explosion, many others crawled from the wreckage and survived to tell the tale. Katz traces the experiences of a captivating cast of characters: an heiress, a world-renowned acrobat, a German Jew working to save his family from the clutches of Nazism, a young cabin boy on his first voyage with the crew. Meanwhile, on the ground were two intrepid journalists whose reporting on the Hindenburg would invent breaking news as we now know it.
In a deeply researched yet gripping, ticking-clock narrative, Shadow Before the Flame offers a portrait of an era—that brief suspended moment in time before war became an inevitability—tracing the rapid rise of fascism and march toward World War II. It is a story that begins with the promise of a future made bright by technological innovation and ends with caskets draped in swastikas in New York City.
Catherine Grace Katz is a writer and historian from Chicago and author of The Daughters of Yalta. She graduated from Harvard in 2013 with a BA in history and in 2014 received her MPhil in modern European history from Christ’s College, University of Cambridge, where she wrote her dissertation on the origins of modern counterintelligence practices. After graduating, Catherine worked in finance in New York City before a very fortuitous visit to the bookstore in the lobby of her office in Manhattan led her to return to history and writing. She received her JD from Harvard Law School in May 2023.
Katz will be in conversation with Robert Costa, a national correspondent for “CBS News Sunday Morning” and chief Washington analyst for CBS News, where he has worked since 2022. He previously served as a national political reporter at The Washington Post and as moderator and managing editor of Washington Week on PBS. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s degree from the University of Cambridge. He is from Bucks County, Pennsylvania.