October 2026 Book Club: Shadow Before the Flame by Catherine Grace Katz.
About the Book
The Hindenburg’s destruction at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937, left an image that still defines the age of the airship. Katz looks behind that image, following passengers, crew, and reporters as the promise of transatlantic travel collided with the political ambitions of the 1930s.
The result places a familiar disaster within a wider history of technological prestige, Nazi propaganda, and the people caught between public spectacle and private experience.
A Reading Perspective
How do new technologies become symbols of national power? How do political interests shape a public narrative? Katz’s focus on individual lives offers a way to examine what an iconic photograph can reveal—and what it can obscure.
Discuss the Book
- How does telling the story through individuals change our understanding of a disaster?
- What happens when technological achievement becomes a political symbol?
- How can a famous image both preserve and narrow historical memory?
Book Details
Viking hardcover · September 22, 2026 · 496 pages · ISBN 9780593832189.