Shadow Before the Flame: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Prelude to War
Well-rounded portraits ... Katz details the exhaustive investigations by American and German boards of inquiry, which concluded that the explosion was an accident.
Ambitious ... Katz wants to use her impressive research...to paint an immersive portrait of prewar Nazi Germany and to put us aboard the Hindenburg on its final flight in May 1937. She succeeds in her mission with uneven results ... Katz is right to try to place the Hindenburg within the larger political currents of its time. But in her quest to tell a big story, she sometimes gets lost in the background details ... At the end, she tries to tell us what the Hindenburg means, instead of letting her research make the point for her. With each digression, we get pulled away from the best part of this book: the stories of people in the air ... When Katz’s Hindenburg is churning over the ocean, her narrative soars.
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By the time the narrative reaches that night, Katz has introduced readers to many of the passengers, so their final moments come across as remarkably poignant. A well-researched title certain to thrill fans of WWII and aviation history.
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