Catherine Grace Katz Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Catherine Grace Katz is a published author and a historian. She is from Winnetka, Illinois, and is known for writing The Daughters of Yalta and Shadow Before the Flame, as well as Harrimans: A Story of Love and War.

She was educated at Harvard and Christ’s College, University of Cambridge, where she graduated with her degrees in history. She also attended Harvard Law School where she obtained her JD. She has done work as a historian and besides that has been an associate at an international law firm in Washington, D.C.

The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War is a 2020 book by Catherine Grace Katz. This is an account of one important week that would end up unleashing fifty years of tyranny for half of Europe as well as push the world into the Cold War as seen from the point of view of three young women.

This book shows the human experience of the conference and includes all of its love, betrayal, tragedy, and humor. She is able to show the relationships that worked to shape our world and according to Oscar-winning writer Julian Fellowes(creator of Downton Abbey), continues ‘to shape our future’.

This is an untold story of three young women who were glamorous and intelligent who went along with their famous fathers in February 1945 to the Yalta Conference. It also is the story of the fateful reverberations that would go on from the conference in World War II’s waning days.

The tensions at Yalta were so great that they were threatening to pull apart the wartime alliance that had been made by Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin, just at the moment that victory was so close. In this WWII biography, the author is able to tell the story of the three women who were selected by their father to go with them and travel to Yalta. Each of them is tied to do so thanks to family loyalty, political savvy, and intertwined romance that had a big impact on those important days.

Kathleen Harriman is the daughter of a United States ambassador to the Soviet Union Averell Harriman. She was a war correspondent as well as a champion skier. Sarah Churchill is an actress turned into an RAF officer and in life she was devoted to her father, who was brilliant but also depended on her for her astute political mind and insights.

Anna was Roosevelt’s only daughter and was selected instead of her mother Eleanor to go with the president to Yalta. Once she was there, she arrived as the person who kept the most damaging secrets that her father had. Placed in the political maelstrom that marked a transition to a post-war world, this novel is a great example of narrative nonfiction when it is well done.

It is the story of daughters and fathers who would see their relationships tested and made stronger by the history that they saw, leading them to build a strong future together. This well researched story that revolves around the Yalta Conference will give others a new view on the female perspective of history through focusing on the stories of Kathleen Harriman, Sarah Churchill, and Anna Roosevelt. It also features the dawn of the Cold War, high-stakes diplomacy, and fathers and their relationships with their daughters. The result is a book that readers simply cannot miss!

Shadow Before the Flame: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Prelude to War is a 2026 book by Catherine Grace Katz. This is a new history that focuses on the disastrous explosion that would lead to the Hindenburg being called the ‘Titanic of the Skies’, the rise of Nazis, and the start of World War II. Whether you already know a lot about this event or are largely in the dark about it, this book will fill you in and illuminate the greater impact of the Hindenburg’s demise.

It was May 6, 1937 that for about 37 seconds the light from the Hindenburg lift up the sky over Lakehurst, New Jersey in conflagration. The deadly accident ended up shocking the world and bringing the era of the airship to a complete close.

In an informative and enlightening account, Catherine Grace Katz uses her historian skills to bring readers the information that is able to allow them to view this disaster as being an important moment in time. It was stuck at the crossroads of increasing tension between Germany (the location of the start of the trip taken by the Hindenburg) and the United States in the thirties, and at a time where aviation was rapidly changing and where the airship had been touted as being part of the future of air travel, a technology that connected the world.

But the Hindenburg exploding would soon prove to set that vision on fire, in a way. The explosion saw a total of 36 people dead and there were many others that did their best to crawl out of the wreckage and tell their story. Katz is able to go along, tracing from the experiences of a cast of characters that include an heiress, an acrobat, and German Jew trying to save him family from Nazis, a cabin boy on his first voyage with the crew, and more.

At the same time on the ground there were two journalists who did reporting on the Hindenburg that would invent the concept of ‘breaking news’ that we still see in effect today. This was a huge and powerful event that took the world by surprise as it seemed to come out of nowhere and from a form of travel that had been talked up as not only being the future of air travel but completely safe.

This book is deeply researched but also engaging enough that readers will be fascinated and not bored to tears ever for a second! The Hindenburg was one of those stories that became larger than life, and back then was a larger than life event that was taking place in real time.

Shadow Before the Flame also shows an era in time before war was inevitable that follows along with fascism’s rapid rise and the march towards the second World War and weaves it skillfully in with details of this disastrous event. A fascinating book that readers will not want to miss!