An Evening with Author Catherine Grace Katz

Author Catherine Grace Katz in Conversation with Mary Beth Morell to discuss Shadow Before the Flame 

Sunday, September 27 | Greenhill Vineyards | Doors at 5:00 PM

Thirty-four seconds. That's how long it took for the greatest airship ever to fly to come apart in flames over a New Jersey field — and for an era to end with it.

Join us in the heart of Virginia wine country for an unforgettable evening at Greenhill Vineyards, just minutes from historic Middleburg, with historian Catherine Grace Katz. Her new book Shadow Before the Flame tells the story of the Hindenburg as it's never been told: not as a freak accident, but as the meeting point of the 1930s' two great currents. The Hindenburg began as a gleaming marvel, a symbol of hope in the young age of flight. It ended as a propaganda machine for the Nazi regime.

Katz tells the story through the people aboard — an adventurous heiress, a vaudeville star, a Chicago industrialist with German Jewish roots, a celebrated zeppelin captain, and a cabin boy on his first crossing to America. On the ground, two journalists covering the disaster invented something we now take for granted: breaking news as we know it.

It's a ticking-clock story about a moment when the illusion of peace hung in the air, and about the lives changed forever when it fell.

Settle in with the rolling hills and vineyard rows around you — wine will be available for purchase, by the glass or the bottle.

About Catherine Grace Katz, Catherine is the author of the acclaimed The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans — A Story of Love and War. A Winnetka, Illinois native, she holds history degrees from Harvard and Christ's College, Cambridge, and a JD from Harvard Law School. She writes history alongside her work as an associate at an international law firm in Washington, D.C.

The Evening 

5:00 — Doors open 

5:30 — Conversation 

6:30 — Book signing

Your ticket includes a copy of Shadow Before the Flame.