Catherine Grace Katz Can Just Feel It

Kate Carpenter 0:00
Welcome back to Drafting the Past. I'm your host Kate Carpenter, and in each episode, I interview a historian about how they research and write history. Obviously, I read a lot of nonfiction, and I'm often skeptical when someone says, "Oh, it's nonfiction, but it reads like a novel" when they describe a book. Let me tell you, that phrase absolutely applies to the newest book from today's guest. As you'll hear, this one kept me up late reading, I was so wrapped up in the subjects and the narrative tension. I'm thrilled to welcome Catherine Grace Katz to the show to talk about how she did it.

Catherine Grace Katz 0:35
Thank you so much for having me. It's so fun to have this conversation with you. I love the chance to talk about the craft of writing and the history, of course, but everything that goes into it.

Kate Carpenter 0:44
Catherine is a writer, historian, and lawyer with degrees in history from Harvard and Cambridge, along with a JD from Harvard. She's the author of two books. The first, The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War introduced readers to Catherine's exceptional work six years ago. Her new book out now is Shadow Before the Flame: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Prelude to War. It's an extraordinary read, and I loved asking Catherine all about the process of writing it, from how she works without an outline, the writing tool she found in her mom's basement to the unlikely inspiration for the book in a classic holiday movie. Here's my conversation with Catherine Grace Katz.

Catherine Grace Katz 1:30
I, I mean, I always loved history from the time I was a little kid, and I was the little kid who was constantly writing stories. I had little notebooks going. I was really lucky that I grew up in this awesome town where our schools had this little program called Young Authors, and you'd write creative stories in grade school, and then the library would like type them up and put them on nice paper, and then you'd illustrate them with colored pencils, and then they'd bind them into little books, and your parents would come for Young Authors Day, and you'd get to read your story to you know all the parents. So, like from the time I was a little kid, I always wanted to be writer. I always loved history. Little House on the Prairie was like my whole life when I was a little kid. I loved World War II movies. Like, oh gosh, The Sound of Music was my favorite. White Christmas, The Great Escape, and I would just kind of chase my grandpa around at the notepad when he'd come over and ask him to tell me about you know being in the navy during the war and growing up during the depression in Montana and things like that. So I was just kind of like always a little self-appointed historian and studied history at Harvard. Got to study with your your co-host and collaborator Megan Kate Nelson there, and I then studied, I had the chance to go to Cambridge to study for my MPhil, and I studied modern European history there. And at that point, I knew that I loved history and I loved to write, and just the feeling of writing and feeling like your words matter. I remember having written a little op-ed for my local newspaper when I was a freshman in college about a big referendum in my town that was going to do this overhaul construction in my high school, and I was like, "This is the wrong time to do it, and this is the wrong way." And I published it, and I just remember the reception to it, where like I felt like I was putting people in conversation. That was just a really exciting feeling, and it was one I knew I wanted to have again and again. But you know, coming out of my master's program in the UK, I kind of knew that I didn't necessarily want to do a PhD in history because I I kind of feel like the stuff that I work on is like sometimes like considered like too fun for like academic historians. At least you know 10 years ago when I was thinking about this, that's changed somewhat since then. But the kinds of things that I wanted to write about, I was like, I want to share this with as many people as possible. You know, not just the academy. There has to be a different way to do this. As much as I really admire and respect academic historians and want them to respect my work and hold myself to very high standards that my professors would hopefully respect, but I just, I don't know. I felt like there was a different path for me. But in the immediate aftermath of school, I went to work in finance in New York, like everyone else in my grade, basically, and I was working at BlackRock in New York City. And by sheer coincidence, in the lobby of my office was a bookstore called Chartwell Booksellers, named after Winston Churchill's country home. And through repeated trips to the bookstore, I got to know the owner. And through the owner of the bookstore, this group called the International Churchill Society, which was having this dinner with Madeleine Albright across the street from my office, and I really wanted to go and hear her speak because I'd never heard her before, but I couldn't afford to take her to the dinner because I was a recent grad, it's super expensive, at the Waldorf, and so I said, you know, is there any chance like they want a volunteer at the dinner? Like I'll show people to their tables or check coats or whatever. And the director of the International Churchill Society, this lovely gentleman named Lee Pollack, said, "You know what? We're just really excited to have a young person who's excited about history.

Catherine Grace Katz 4:47
So why don't you just come and join us at the dinner?" And so at the dinner, I had a chance to meet a number of folks from the International Churchill Society, including members of the Churchill family. And it was right around the time that they were opening the papers of Churchill's middle daughter, Sarah, to outside researchers, and given that I had studied at Cambridge, which is where her papers were, they asked if I'd be interested in writing a little article about them for their magazine, and I said yes, just thinking it'd be a fun way to stay engaged with history. Meanwhile, I was kind of considering whether I wanted to go to law school, and I remember distinctly leaving this dinner and calling my mom a couple days later, as I was walking home from the office after this idea about writing an article about Sarah Churchill's collection at Churchill College, Cambridge, and my mom said, "This is so great. You never know. This could take your life in a totally different direction that you never expected." And I said, "I'm pretty sure I'm just going to write an article that just you know a handful of people read. And she said, "You never know. Unexpected things happen. We'll see what happens." And I think the moral of the story is always listen to your mom because that was the thing that got me started on the idea for my first book, Daughters of Yalta, and completely changed my life. And I think it just goes to show that no matter who you are, where you are, you never know who you're going to meet when you walk out the door each day, and to be open to new opportunities, and you know, being excited about things and enthusiastic in a genuine way-you never know where that's going to lead because it'll probably lead you in the right path when you least expect it.

Kate Carpenter 6:11
That's amazing. Okay, so I have so many things I want to ask you. First, I want to ask kind of the basics of of just how you work. So, when and where do you like to do your writing?

Catherine Grace Katz 6:20
It kind of depends. So, for, while I was working in Daughters of Yalta, I was, part of the time I was in law school while I was doing that. I finished that while I was a 1L. So, one of the things that was great was I was back at Harvard for for law school where I studied as an undergrad, and beautiful libraries there. So, you know, the chance to go to Widener Library and really you know tuck in for the day, or go late to Lamont Library where all the undergrads are, and it smells kind of funky, but it smells like the place where you get work done. I always enjoy working there, like when I was on campus. But I actually did a lot of the work at home at the same desk where I did a lot of my high school papers, college applications, all of that, we have this really cool giant, like you know, old-fashioned partner desk in the little office of our house, and I'd love to just kind of tuck in there. It just felt very, I don't know, historic and appropriate. So when I was home, I would write there, and then yeah, now but working on this book, I live in D.C. now, so I still spend a lot of time in Chicago and still spend a lot of time at that desk as well, but for this book, I spent a lot of weekends in the Georgetown University Library, which is not quite as attractive. But if you set up like right in front of this giant window on the fifth floor, you get incredible views over Georgetown in the fall with the changing leaves, and so those are my favorite places to work. I don't love to just kind of like stay home and stay in one place all day. I need to get out, get out and about, feel like I'm going to work. So I like to have a little bit of variety. But I'm not like married to like this is my only place. This is the only routine I have. I'm not like slave to routine. I think, and some of that has been out of necessity because I've also been working full time as an attorney now. I've been working on this book, so it kind of has to fit in where it does.

Kate Carpenter 8:01
Yeah. So I mean, so when do you do your writing then, as you juggle a different job?

Catherine Grace Katz 8:07
Yeah. Well, I'm I'm a writer and historian first and foremost. The law fits around that, and that's a crazy thing to say about somebody who's working full time as an associate in big law. So I, you know, I also am a normal person who maintains a normal social life, though, so I'm not just a total workaholic. But you know, a lot of this book was written on the weekends. You know, get to the library at you know 930, 10 a.m. stay there for eight, 9, 10, hours, pack my little PB and J, go outside and eat it, go back it in the library. It's a lot of that. A lot of staying up too late at night. Like oftentimes, you know, you get the the best idea right before you're about to go to bed, and then it's like another two hours. But whatever. I'm not like a huge like get up at the crack of dawn person. I wish I was a morning person because it is lovely in the morning before anyone's bothering you. Just have this time of peace and quiet. I'm just not wired that way. But I also have been fortunate. My firm's been really supportive, and they gave me a couple of months off when I was doing the first draft of this book. So for a little bit of time, I had time just to write, and I like sprint wrote draft one to get that done. But the rest of the time, I was working full time while I was doing the research, doing the editing, later drafts. So I don't know when it all happens, but it kind of does. And I think there's more time in the day than we think we have.

Kate Carpenter 9:21
How do you like to organize your research and notes?

Catherine Grace Katz 9:25
It's a little bit of controlled chaos, I suppose. So controversially, I'm not a big outliner. You and I had a little back and forth about that before we got on air. Yeah. So when I am in the archive, my goal is always to kind of just get as much material as I can. You're, you know, usually on a tight schedule. You can't spend forever and ever in an archive. There are many that you have to hit. You're on a budget. You know, kind of, you're on a timeline. You've got you know 10 archives you need to go to. So as much it would be nice to spend six weeks in one archive that's just not realistic. So my method is I take pictures of as much as I possibly can that might be useful, and often it's that last box at the end of the day that you find that gem that you didn't know you were looking for in kind of a folder marked miscellaneous, right? As the archivist is, you know, trying to usher you out the door, but then I get home and kind of then I process what I have gone through in the archive, and that's you know combing through all the documents. I keep you know very meticulous records of box numbers, you know, so I know where everything came from, document titles, and all that. I'm kind of combing for, you know, the information that I think is going to be relevant and important, and I kind of transpose that into another document. I have a document for each archive, kind of split into sections for different boxes and folders. But generally, I I don't love to have more than kind of like a general outline, kind of largely in my head slash whatever was in the book proposal. In a large way, I can kind of see it floating in my head like a movie, where there are kind of these key set pieces and the background, the characters, and the history kind of are the the linking elements between the set pieces. There's kind of a lot of pacing that I can feel. I find that if I get too locked into outlining, I kind of get stuck into like trying to jam all this cool stuff I found in the archive into the manuscript, which does not flow well. It feels overstuffed, and it feels like I'm trying to show everyone how much cool stuff I have. So for me, when I'm organizing, it's kind of almost like a chapter by chapter approach, where I know kind of generally what the chapter arc is going to be, you know, across the entire book, and then I will jot down like on a piece of scrap paper key pieces of evidence, quotations, you know, little nuggets from the archive that I know belong in the chapter, and kind of by the end of the chapter, I make sure that I hit all of them. But it's not usually does not all end up in the chapter in the order in which I kind of jotted down notes in the first place. And then I have just kind of some odds and ends that are just like these awesome little nuggets that I don't know where they belong, and I don't want to forget them either, and kind of lose them in my volume of notes and notes on notes. And so I'll write each of these little nuggets down on a sticky note, you know, with whatever source I found it from. And if you remember those tri-fold posters that we all used when we were doing class projects, we all did a million of them. I found one in my parents' basement when I was working on my first book, and I just kind of started sticking sticky notes of you know little nuggets that I didn't know where they belonged, but I knew they belonged somewhere.

Catherine Grace Katz 12:25
I stuck them all over this poster board, which I could fold up and put away, so my space wouldn't get completely destroyed of you know messes of papers. But I kind of call it my murder wall, like in a detective show where you have all little you know scraps of evidence linked up with strings and pictures and things like that, and so that's kind of my like organized chaos in a way. Even though a lot of it just kind of lives in my head.

Kate Carpenter 12:50
I love that so much. Also, I saw you I saw you post about your murder wall on Instagram, and it blew my mind because it's such a simple solution to put it on one of those display boards, and it never occurred to me. I live in a small old house with very limited wall space, and I'm pretty visual. But like, I never know where to put notes. So anyway, you-

Catherine Grace Katz 13:09
Exactly. I'm also very--I'm glad. I'm happy to share that little hack with anyone. Who knew that like what we were doing in third grade would you know end up being super useful to everyone? But I also am very visual. I don't have like a color coding system or anything like that. I just literally am like, here's a new pack of sticky notes. I guess these are blue, and they'll start going up, and they're like, oh, my next pack is yellow, and they'll start going up. But I'll kind of remember where I put them on the board long after I folded it up and put it away, and I'm like, oh, this is the note. Or if I'm like, I know these 10 things'll go in this chapter. I'll just take them off and like bundle them up in a little paperclip and take them off to the library with me and make sure I like get them all and check them off when I'm done. So that's kind of my my process, I suppose. I'm not a Robert Caro like outline the entire book and put it up on pieces of paper all around my office. That's not me, but everybody does what works for them. And there's probably like a tidier way to do what I do, but it is kind of this old school. Like I am, like you know, on the younger end of historians, but I work in a kind of old school way. There's great technology like Google Docs and spreadsheets and stuff to keep yourself organized. That doesn't work for me. I need to write it down, and once I've written it down, I'll remember it forever.

Kate Carpenter 14:19
I love that. Where in the process of doing research do you feel like you're ready to start writing? How do you know when you've hit that point?

Catherine Grace Katz 14:26
I think each book it depends. I think a key thing is there's so much of having to let the sources guide you, or you have a general idea of where you're going when you head into an archive. But really, kind of, it's only once you've been immersed in those primary source documents that it takes you in a direction that maybe you weren't anticipating, so you really have to kind of let the the sources and the voices from the past guide where you're going. And if it feels like things are just not flowing, it's usually because you're wrong, so you have to go back into the archive and do more research. So I feel like I'm in kind of like a continuous research process always. So there will always be elements. Of any chapter that I'm working on, that I'm like, oh, I need to learn more about that. Just this very small thing that's only a paragraph, but I need to make sure I understand this in and out. And you don't know you need that until you get into the book. But I say there's kind of you know this enough research. There's kind of the element of like doing enough research first to write a really tight proposal, and I think the exercise of writing a proposal is very helpful to kind of show you what you know and what you still need to learn. And then after writing the proposal, selling the book, I'd say for me it's like a solid year of dedicated research of just kind of building up a wealth of sources and information. And then there just comes a point where I'm like, I have to start writing. This has to come out of my brain. It's just banging around in there, and I have this idea, and I have I know exactly how to phrase it, and like I just have to sit down and write it. I do say I would say that like the first chapter or two is for both books has been the hardest for me. It gets like way easier like by chapter three, but that kind of like the balance of the setup is always tough. So I kind of like write like a not great version of like chapter one too. Then I'm like cooking by chapter three, and then I'll usually go back and you know put a lot of attention into the front part of the book because oftentimes it's like as you get deeper into it, you realize you need to set things up differently. And so I've definitely learned to be patient with myself and not too much put too much pressure on knocking out of the park in the first draft of the first couple of chapters because they will need to evolve.

Kate Carpenter 16:25
How do you approach the revision process then?

Catherine Grace Katz 16:28
I'm kind of a continuous reviser. I start each day, and I think kind of sitting down to write can be really daunting. And so you kind of need to give yourself like a little bit of almost like low hanging fruit to feel a sense of accomplishment to get back into it, and so I actually kind of revise what I wrote the day before at the beginning of each writing day. So there is that. Usually, I'm really excited about what I've been working on, and so by the time I finish a chapter, a couple of shorter chapters, I'll read them aloud to my mom. That's usually my first line of attack of editing, and then once I've kind of workshopped it, we've talked it out. I mean, she has always been the person that I've gone to to kind of talk through ideas, often at 2 o'clock in the morning. God bless her, she's the kindest, most patient person in the world. And then when it's like time to really get in the weeds, then I go to my sister, who is like the scariest, most intimidating editor ever. Even though she's 11 years younger than me, she basically edited Daughters of Yalta as a 17-year-old in high school. Sometimes I'll be reading it aloud to myself, and she'll be in the other room, and she'll just be like, "Stop! You used that, you know, really similar phrasing a couple of pages ago. Go back and read it to yourself again, and you'll see it's there." And she's 100% right. She's really ruthless and like doesn't cushion it. Like "this part is great, but this part needs some work." It's like "this part is a problem, and you know that I'm right. So go fix it, and then we'll talk about it again when it's fixed." I'm just like, oh my god. Okay, so like by the time it actually goes to my editor, it's like pretty tight. My mom and my sister have already been through it, and no one in my family is shy about sharing their opinions. It's like opinions all over the place all the time. Usually constructive, but you can't have thin skin.

Kate Carpenter 18:02
That's fantastic. Well, your family obviously plays a big role in your writing, and and you also mentioned the acknowledgements that it was kind of an offhanded remark from your brother that even launched you into this new book. So, first of all, for people who haven't read it, if you don't mind telling that story, that'd be great. But I also want to know what what your reaction was to that comment.

Catherine Grace Katz 18:22
So my new book is about the Hindenburg disaster. It's called Shadow Before the Flame: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Prelude to War, and it is situating the Hindenburg disaster in a way that I really have not seen it situated before. Where it's kind of this event that everybody knows, kind of as like the equivalent of the Titanic of the sky, but yet no one can place it, and they really don't know anything about it. They don't know when it happened. People are like wildly off of when they think it occurred. It's 1937. People have no idea where it happened because it's you know a German airship. They assume it happened in Germany. It actually happened in Lakehurst, New Jersey. There's the famous Herb Morrison quote: "Oh, the humanity!" that a lot of people know, which you know, understandably, in the moment he thought everyone had perished, and when you listen to that, you also assume, when you see it with photos and maybe it's the Led Zeppelin album cover or you know other famous pictures of it, it looks this Titanic inferno looks like everybody died. Of course, actually, most people survived. Two thirds of the 100 or so people between passengers and crew survived. So it's just this kind of thing that it exists, but people have no idea about any of the details. The most basic of which are the most mind blowing of all, but it's also kind of completely hovering separate and apart from the history to which it belongs, and it's at this really interesting intersection of the rise of the Nazis and the road to World War II, and the Nazis having used it as kind of the ultimate tool of soft power and propaganda and kind of reputation building abroad because it was this incredibly impressive technology that was you know appropriately you know appreciated in kind of all of its amazement. It long predated the Nazis, so it wasn't, you know, they'd been around, airships had been around since 1900, early 1900s, they were not a Nazi invention. They became co-opted by the Nazis, but it's also kind of on the collision course with like all of the amazing innovations in technology and global connectivity, and you know the you know very quick acceleration of development of aviation, and so kind of a similar technology moment that we're living through today that's transforming the way that people connect all around the world, and the flow of information, and so it's kind of like this, the geopolitical and the technological forces coming head to head, which found I found really intriguing, and I don't think people have really tangled with too much when it comes to the Hindenburg. And then alongside that, it was a pivotal transformative moment in the history of the news and modern breaking news media would not exist today without the Hindenburg disaster. It completely changed kind of the way that people heard the news and remarkable events kind of within their own homes as they were occurring around the world in a way that was very different from how they've been shared with the public before, which kind of set the stage for World War II. But before that, radio really was not a news medium, which is interesting. So it's kind of all these forces, but you know the story is shared through the lens of the passengers and the crew and the personal stories of the people on board as they lived and experienced it in a very narrative, nonfiction forward sort of way. So it is a definitive history of the Hindenburg disaster, but very much you feel like you're reading a narrative. So I kind of love these slices of time where you see the world changing very quickly in just a few days, or you know even a few moments, and you've got a really diverse, interesting set of characters who wouldn't all be in the room together, but they've kind of been brought together by these unique circumstances. So the way that this story came about is probably one of the weirdest origin stories of any book of history. So, a couple years ago at Christmas, my family was watching A Christmas Story for the millionth time, and you know, folks out there will remember Ralphie Parker who wants his Red Rider BB gun. He's pining away for it on Christmas morning.

Catherine Grace Katz 21:59
You might remember him coming downstairs and opening Aunt Clara's pink bunny outfit, which he does not want to wear before he finally gets the Red Rider BB gun, thanks to his dad at the very end of Christmas morning. But when Ralphie comes downstairs, you know he's there with his brother Randy and his little brother, you know, mister "I can't put my arms down" in the snow suit. He dives into the pile of presents and he finds a toy with his name on it, and it's a zeppelin. And he goes, "Wow, it's a zeppelin!" Kind of like zooms it around the wrapping paper, falls asleep holding it that night. And this just kind of led to a little, you know, conversation with my family after we watched the movie. Just you know, we'd seen it 100 times, but hadn't really stopped to think about it. And my younger brother, Oliver, who's always been, you know, loves, he's always loved aviation. He just kind of started talking about like, can you imagine what it was like to see these things flying overhead? You looked at how big it was. It was like the size of the U.S. Capitol building flying over you. You know, airplanes were not a common sight at the time. They were certainly not that big. A 747 is not even a third as big as the Zeppelins were. Certainly didn't exist then. And so he was just saying, you know, can you imagine what that would be like to look up and see that flying overhead, or to feel a shadow pass over you, or you know, to fly on it? And then a moment later, he goes, Catherine, you should write a book about the Hindenburg disaster, just like that. And of course, being the you know know-it-all older sister, I'm like, ah, I don't know, it's like really famous. I'm sure tons of people have written about that already. And he just says, you know, I've never seen a good book about it before, so why don't you look into it? So we kind of just like, you know, pulled out our computers and just like look it up like books about the Hindenburg disaster. And there kind of isn't really a definitive book about it. There are a couple of very conspiracy theory type accounts written in the 70s, and there are even chapters of books on aviation history about the Hindenburg and the Zeppelins. But kind of the story that I wanted to read didn't exist, and so I sort of thought about it. And then before I knew it, just little pieces in my life just kept flagging things about the Hindenburg, and they kind of just kept popping up in front of me. Like I was leafing through Bill Shires' Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and then in my law school copyright law class, the Hindenburg came up in a case that we were reading, and it just like kind of just kept appearing everywhere, and that was when I was like, this is the feeling that I had almost you know when I was doing Daughters of Yalta. It's like all these little signs from the universe that are pointing me in this direction, showing me that this is the right way to proceed. Okay, like I have to do this. I'm writing this story, and so that's how it all came about. Thanks to my brother and A Christmas Story, and so it just goes to show you never know when inspiration is going to strike and who's going to you know make an offhand comment that's going to take your life in a direction you never anticipated.

Kate Carpenter 24:29
Yeah, that's incredible. I mean that it's so funny because that was a little bit my response as a reader at first when I heard about the book was like, oh surely there's like a good book already about the Hindenburg. No, no, there's not. And then it was also the like, well, I know about the Hindenburg, but then upon reflection, was like, hmm, I don't know that much about the Hindenburg other than it existed. So yeah, exactly as you describe it.

Catherine Grace Katz 24:51
And it's just such an amazing aesthetic too, of like that time in the late 1930s where it's really Art Deco, kind of very chrome looking. I mean, it's like the the aviation equivalent of the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building, it's totally kind of like Jules Verne science fiction meets Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express, where you've got all these strangers who are thrown together for this you know elegant journey over a few days, where you know it's like you have the kind of the sophistication of you know a French trained chef preparing three course meals and an aluminum piano in the lounge and people drinking cocktails at the bar and in the smoking room, which is also crazy that there was a smoking room on a hydrogen filled zeppelin. But it's like you also know like there's a sense of foreboding that like not everybody's going to make it out of this journey alive, and so kind of those two elements. And Agatha Christie was an incredibly popular writer at the time, and I think, just kind of like having read so many novels of that era, it's an era that is just so palpable in kind of its unique aesthetics and feeling. And I think also it's like we think of the 1930s as this era that's just shrouded in gloom, with the depression at the beginning and World War II at the end. But I think if you ask someone in 1937, you know how they were feeling about the direction of the world, they would actually be really optimistic because there were so many amazing innovations happening at the time, showcased at the World's Fair in Chicago. You know, things like people, you know, having more already access to cars. Radios were in the vast majority of households, both in the U.S. and Germany. Refrigerators, dishwater washers, air conditioning-like these things were all becoming invented, being invented, and like ending up in people's homes, and it was just this really thrilling time to be alive before this cataclysmic world event occurs, and so it's just also interesting to kind of put yourself in the footsteps of someone kind of I think in this like critically understudied moment in history between the Depression and the you know acceleration towards war.

Kate Carpenter 26:41
Absolutely. I mean, I think I'm going to get back to sort of that acceleration. But but one thing that really struck me reading this book was how much you're able to sort of show in telling this one story kind of attitudes toward Germany and and Hitler's rise. And and I'm especially struck by like Bill Shirer, this journalist who is is in Europe, in Berlin at the start of it, sort of trying to communicate to people what's going on and feeling so frustrated that like no one is really listening. Yeah, it's just such a fascinating thing that I hadn't really spent a lot of time immersed in before.

Catherine Grace Katz 27:14
Yeah, and the fact that he is kind of one of the primary voices who's telling the story of the Hindenburg, kind of in real time. He he's in Germany. He does the first kind of you know broadcast on the-- he's he's a print journalist, as all journalists were at the time. There really weren't radio journalists at then. He would later become one of the pioneers in that, working with Edward R. Murrow during World War II. But the first radio broadcast he ever did was about the Hindenburg and reporting on people's reactions to it within Germany, and it's also just you know really interesting and kind of thinking about the craft of history. Shirer was kind of the first cut historian for many of these events of World War II through his columns initially, and then in kind of the immediate personal reactions through the publication of Berlin Diary, which is not a diary in the strictest sense, but more of a contemporaneous reflection on events unfolding in Germany, which he smuggles out of Germany and then publishes soon after. And then, you know, after the war, he writes The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which was the first of its kind, full-scale history of the lead up to, descent into and development of the war using German documents that had been discovered after the Nazis had been defeated, and so he has these kind of repeated instances of being the historian of first instance in multiple different ways of the same events, and so it's interesting to think about him as a historical character, kind of giving us the history as we know it now, and how did he, his unique positioning kind of lead us to see the war in those events as we understand them today? Thanks to him in all these different iterations. And I think it's no surprise that Rise and Fall the Third Reich remains one of the best-selling history books of all time.

Kate Carpenter 28:49
So I do want to talk more about one of the most impressive things about this book, and just just to be clear to readers, this book is excellent. But one of one of its most impressive components is just how propulsive it is. That there's this real sense of narrative tension, and and some of that, you know, there's the gift, so to speak, that like we know things end badly, and so you're, you have that from the beginning, but nonetheless, you really like do an excellent job of kind of putting us in the moment, and so even though we know on a larger scale what's going to happen, there's still just like a page turning question of what comes next. What are your strategies for sustaining tension like that?

Catherine Grace Katz 29:45
Yeah, I think so much of kind of the way that I approach writing, it's very narrative. It's very character driven, and I almost want you to forget that you're reading nonfiction. I want you to feel like you're reading a novel, and the way that the characters develop and the story develops, kind of through almost like a, it's almost like a group biography in a way, but kind of like a very particular part of a biography of someone's life, and so I want you to feel really invested in these people when they reach that critical moment that's going to fundamentally reshape their lives. And each of these individuals of the story, they kind of represent really different segments of society and forces happening around the world. You've got you know this incredibly wealthy American businessman who's on his way home from Europe. You've got an American expat heiress who's been living in Italy and seeing that world change around her. You've got a German American immigrant who is Jewish who's kind of been successful in the United States and using his success to kind of help you know pay to bring his family members over. You have a cabin boy making his first journey to the United States. You have a German Zeppelin captain who's kind of like many many Germans who feel you know like well they're not signed up Nazi party members, but the Nazis' investment in his business of airships has you know allowed them to surpass what they would have been able to achieve without that kind of investment, and you know this industry that you've staked your career on would not be viable without the financial support of the Nazi regime. And so you see, kind of just all these different forces at the time represented through each of these people. And I, you know, one of the ways that I kind of think about writing history, especially tragedy. I remember reading Norman MacLean's Young Men and Fire when I was in high school, and I was just so struck by the way that he wrote about writing about the events of the Man Gulch Fire of 1949, and talking about how some characters from history are kind of content to lie in the past, and they don't really kind of announce themselves to you as the historian later, but some very much are. It seems like you know they left so much behind as if they're intent on telling their story, and they really emerge from the historical record and they became they become very present figures in your mind. And so it's not like you know as a historian you're not like a casting director like oh I'm gonna have this person carry this part of the story, and this person carry that part, but it very much evolves organically, and people are just kind of insisting on telling their story to you, and kind of I think it's about it's you know on us as historians to listen to them and be guided by who is carrying the story, and so it's you know I think that there's all these grand events of history, it's easy to kind of put, you know, someone like Churchill or Roosevelt on a pedestal, and you see them as people like you can't really relate to because they're larger than life. But so much of history and the decisions at the geopolitical level, or technology and regulation, the ultimate results fall on regular people, and even world leaders are regular people with families, loved ones, people that they turn to in times of doubt and crisis, and this is these are feelings that all of us experience. And so, kind of really by bringing the human, you know, the quote is "Oh, the humanity." The word I kept at the heart of the story the whole time is humanity, and you will care so much more about the Hindenburg by not just oh here was a crazy Nazi airship that exploded in New Jersey, but it means something to people, and it matters to them. It matters to their descendants, many of whom I had a chance to interview for this book. And by bringing the personal side to these grand events of history that we know, I think makes you feel invested in it, and that's what I want to relay to readers as an author.

Kate Carpenter 33:23
I mean, one way that you do that is that you really you bring the characters to life so vividly. As as I mentioned to you before this conversation, I stayed up late one night because I had to know what happened to one of the characters. I was so invested in him, and you know--

Catherine Grace Katz 33:36
I'm really glad you feel that way. And I think I know which one you're talking about. And no spoilers, but I'm really, really sorry about that one.

Kate Carpenter 33:44
You know, fiction writers have the advantage of being able to, you know, pull in whatever characteristics they need to make us feel and see characters. But nonfiction writers are at a disadvantage that way, right? Because we only have what's available to us archivally. So I'm wondering how you think about developing those characters and making sure that they seem like full people, and how you kind of overcome when there's information you wish you could include, but that you don't have.

Catherine Grace Katz 34:08
Yeah, and I think one of the hardest things-it's like this is the irony of being a nonfiction writer and historian-you come to know these people so well, so intimately, everything about them, and yet you'll never meet them, and you care about these people tremendously. But at the end of the day, you can't give everyone the ending that they deserve, and that's one of the hardest things. It's kind of heartbreaking to get to the end of the story where you know some people live and some people don't, and even those who live, you know, it's it's some people ride off into the sunset and have wonderful lives, but it doesn't happen for everyone, and so it's just, that's, you know, it's you get like the full spectrum of human emotions in writing a book like this, but I think I, as a historian, I think I go after details that are different than some other people to kind of, because my my focus is not just the event, but I want you to understand the event and what's the forces of the time period and what's important to take away from the history through the people who are living through it. And to be, to feel real to the extent that you care about them, you need to know things like you know talk to their family members about like when you think of you know your father, you think of your mother. What is it that reminds you of them? You know what what perfume did your mother wear? What cigars did your father smoke? You know what were some fraternity hijinks your grandfather got up to in college that he would tell stories about later. You know these kinds of things. That it's this is how we experience the world when we think about our loved ones. It's like what stands out to you about them. Like if you were to tell a historian about your mom, the things that you would bring up wouldn't necessarily be like my mom was involved in this big business transaction in you know 1985, and it was a really proud moment for her. Like no, like this is your mom. Like what brings her to life in your mind? And those are the same kinds of details that I want to put into the book, so it feels like this is a real person, and it's like someone that you know. And they're just kind of little sprinklings of details like that, and they're really unusual places to find them, and it depends on the person. Sometimes it's by interviewing their family members. Sometimes it's by looking through a scrapbook and kind of like letters from you know old friends that you find where there's these little shreds of details that like are not necessarily historically important, but they're personally important. Where the record is sparse, it's really frustrating because sometimes it's like, damn! I would love to know what these. It's like someone says, "and then they discuss the cares of the world, like over cigars in the smoking room." It's like, well, I would like to know what they were discussing about the cares of the world, like especially in Germany, given that you had this very you know sophisticated group of Americans and Germans traveling together. I'm sure they had a really compelling conversation. I don't know what it was. I can't conjecture what it was, but I think that kind of in those absences of exactly kind of the verbatim line that you would love from someone, that's the opportunity for you to step in and you to speak as the historian about what is happening in the world at the time. You provide the background, provide provide the salient details of the era and the kind of the broader forces that you want your reader to care about, and so it's kind of in the absence of their voice, it becomes you showing the reader what historically is incredibly important for them to know at this time, and so it's kind of a conversation back and forth between the characters speaking for themselves. I say characters mean they're real people, and you as a historian, kind of filling in those gaps of what we today may not know now that we should know.

Kate Carpenter 37:32
So when I was reading, I actually went back and reread after I had finished how you brought each person, each character on on stage, so to speak, in the book, because you do it so brilliantly. You establish them with a sense of character, but you also weave it into historical context, and so you use each opportunity of for introduction to also bring in another part of of the history. How do you think about this? I think this was the part that most blew my mind to learn that you don't outline because this seemed to me like such an intricate thing to accomplish. So, how do you think about introducing characters like that?

Catherine Grace Katz 38:07
I wish I could tell you that I have like a really conscious thought process of how I do it. I mean, aside from kind of like you can't introduce every character the same way because that just gets really repetitive, and I think the most the other piece of writing advice that like I firmly believe in, and I don't know where I heard this, but I think it's just like you have to read it aloud to yourself. You have to sit there and read your whole book aloud to yourself, and that can be really annoying. But you will hear the pacing of your story entirely differently that way. I read every chapter aloud to myself as I'm writing it, and so you'll pick up on it, like where you're kind of using the same construction too many times, and you'll get annoyed hearing it, and then you'll be like, "Okay, if I'm a reader, I'm going to get annoyed by this too. But I don't know. I just think that it so much that comes from just like the kind of characters that I grew up, kind of the world that I was immersed in. You know, reading things like Anne of Green Gables and Little Women, and The Secret Garden, and my mom read all the Harry Potter books aloud to us, and the Chronicles of Narnia, and Little House on a Prairie, and I don't know. There's just kind of like a passive absorption of storytelling, kind of through like what I read as a kid, and I just almost see there's just kind of a, like, inherent feeling, and it's like I kind of know exactly how they want to announce themselves. It's like they tell me how they want to announce themselves, and I'm sorry if it's a really unsatisfying answer, but I think some characters in this book they they illustrate different things through their lived experience, and so the characters will inherently represent different elements of the world of 1937 through the way that they live, through the way that they arrive on the scene, and I don't know. It's just the the best way I can describe it is just kind of like there's just like I can just feel when they should arrive, and probably because I've watched too many movies, but I don't know. It's kind of like there's just a pacing to when carachters are introduced throughout a well-constructed story, and I think you can only really feel that by reading a ton and watching really good movies too. And I I use movie scores as my background when I write, and movie scores are also inherently about telling a story in a way that's different from other pieces of classical music. So I I don't know, like I wish I could tell you exactly how I plot it out. This is probably why I can't outline because I'm like I can just feel it. Like how do you how do you put a feeling into an outline? So I'd probably teach a terrible class because I'd be like I don't know, just feel it out. Go watch the movies. I'm gonna teach you how to write a tragedy. Now we're gonna go watch Alfred Hitchcock.

Kate Carpenter 40:40
You mentioned just now, kind of interviewing family members and other people, and you you did a lot of interviewing for this book. I think sometimes people think that histories that say are set in the 1930s, like there's no interviewing to be done, but you tracked down a lot of people to talk about what what was it like to work with descendants and other people who were sort of connected to these events.

Catherine Grace Katz 40:59
That's my favorite part of this job, and that was something that was really special about working on my first book. You know, this came about through kind of getting to know the Churchill family in the the first instance, and through them, I got to know the Roosevelt family and the Harriman family, and all those folks have become lifelong friends to me. And it's just kind of a remarkable thing. It just, I'm so incredibly lucky that these people were willing to trust the story of their mother, their aunt, their grandmother, kind of with a perfect stranger who, at that time, I'd never published anything, and you know the fact that they were willing to take a chance on me and to allow me to tell that story, which is incredibly personal, was just the greatest gift, and I will forever be so grateful for that. And just the chance to get to know these people, it makes you realize it's like yes, like Winston Churchill was part of someone's family, and he was somebody's grandfather, and that's it. Just makes you stop and step back from the history as you know it, and just kind of reframes the way that you see things. And so for this one, it was a little bit more of kind of like a disparate treasure hunt in a way. Some folks I was able to track down kind of on like the more of like the history of reporting and kind of the news side with some people who'd worked with, like people like William Shirer, who I was able to connect with through you know a couple journalists I know of, kind of some you know veteran news people who'd worked with him, kind of when he was at the end of his career and they were the beginning of their career, which was really cool. Sometimes it was just like random cold emails to a descendant who you know is a professor at a university, and it's like, oh, like here's their email. I'm just going to send them a message. The craziest one, though, was, actually two crazy ones. One, one of the the figures, the one that you stayed up all night reading about, his family actually was friends with a family friend of mine through the kind of like Irish Catholic Chicago kind of giant family world, which my family is part of, which my friend's family is part of, and then this family. And so my mom was like, "If you just ask them, I would bet you 100 bucks that they know someone in that family." And sure enough, they did. And I got to go to Lakehurst with the granddaughter of one of the Hindenburg passengers and experience that with her, and just see like the personal emotional element of being there with someone for whom this is their family history. But the craziest one was I was trying to find the descendants of this character or this person named Benny Spah, who was a German American immigrant. He was a vaudeville performer. He did some acting and he was an acrobat and kind of would go on these world tours to Germany, you know, across the United States. As vaudeville was the most popular form of public entertainment at the time, and I was like, there are a number of siblings who I think might be around today. I'm not 100% sure, but like I haven't seen any obituaries that they passed away. Like, there's got to be a way to connect with them because three of his kids were actually there at Lakehurst waiting for him when he arrived back home on the Hindenburg.

Catherine Grace Katz 43:44
So I was like trying to figure out like how do I, was, you know, sent like a cold Facebook message to one of them, like, they never opened it, probably haven't checked their account in 10 years but a friend of mine from law school was like hey one of my co clerks that I'm working with this year in my clerkship he had a, his relative like was on the Hindenburg and, you know, took a bunch of pictures on the Hindenburg and like I'd love to connect you with him, and I was like wow okay great like and I thought it was somebody else that he was related to. No it was actually the family I'd been looking for--

Kate Carpenter 44:12
That's incredible.

Catherine Grace Katz 44:12
--which was unbelievable and so I got to go and interview Benny Spah's daughter who's in her 90s now she's absolutely amazing but remembers every minute of being there has you know personal kind of artifacts that were with him on the Hindenburg that still smell like smoke almost 90 years later, and so it's just unbelievable and just the chance to get to know these families is like truly the greatest part of the entire experience and I'm so grateful to all of them for being willing to share their family stories with me.

Kate Carpenter 44:38
Yeah, that's amazing. What a gift to all of us too that you captured that history before that sort of second generation is entirely gone.

Catherine Grace Katz 44:46
Yeah, it's just I like you feel like you're kind of in a race against the clock where it's it's not going to be there forever, and especially World War II. Like I don't know if every book I'll write will be World War II centric, but I almost feel like this pressure of time, like right now is the time to capture these stories, and if I don't act quickly, it's going to be too late. I also think it's just like a great reminder that we all have fascinating people in our own families, and so like this year at Thanksgiving, or you know the next time you see your grandparents, aunts, and uncle, like sit down with them, pull out your phone, you know, take a voice memo, and just like ask them to tell some stories and capture your own family history, because someday those people won't be there, and you know whether you ultimately want to write a book about your grandparents or you just want to have something to pass down. There's nothing like hearing from these people in their own words, and often the things that they think aren't important or aren't special historically, those are some of the most fascinating things of all. And so just, you know, if we're all on our phones so much, pull it out, start taking a voice memo, and just ask your family questions.

Kate Carpenter 45:44
That's fantastic. I want to ask a little bit about your influences here at the end. So first, I'm going to ask you, what's the most influential writing advice you've ever gotten?

Catherine Grace Katz 45:53
Most influential writing advice, hands down, was from my friend Gioia Diliberto, who she writes both nonfiction and fiction, and she also teaches writing. She taught at Northwestern for a long time. And she and I had coffee when I was working on my first book. And she asked me to tell her what my book was about. And so I go on this long spiel about what it's about, blah blah blah. And she goes, "Okay, stop. I'm going to take you through an exercise I do with my writing students." And she says, "Okay, tell me what your book is about in a sentence," and so I did, and a little trickier to have to put it in one sentence. And then she said, "Okay, now put your book into a phrase, like a logline from a movie." Much harder to get it down just a few words. And then she says, "Okay, now tell me what your book is about at its heart in one word." And so I sat and thought about it. This is really, really hard. And then I realized my book is about relationships. It's about relationships between nations, relationships between leaders, and most importantly, for the story about the relationships of fathers and daughters. And kind of having that word then in the center of my mind for the rest of the time while I was writing the book, it kept me from straying off into kind of directions and sidelines that are pieces of information in history that are really interesting, but not necessarily core to this story. Maybe it belongs in another story. Maybe it belongs in an endnote. I do have a ton of extra stuff in endnotes, so that's why my endnotes are like 100 pages long. So don't don't skip those. They're there for a reason. But that exercise was instrumental for me in staying focused. I did that same thing when I was working on this book, and that word for me this time was humanity. Herb Morrison, "Oh, the humanity." It's in the famous quote, but it is about the humanity of this moment and kind of how the humanity has been abstracted and lost. You know, initially in kind of the way that this was remembered publicly in Nazi Germany, where the victims of the Hindenburg, like their their individual humanity, was stripped from them, kind of, in the initial memorials to and funerals for the victims, where it became very much kind of propaganda for the state. But then over time, as conspiracy theories around the story have swirled, kind of all these wild conjectures about what brought down the Hindenburg, which are crazy and reveal much more about kind of other forces of the society than they do about the Hindenburg, namely anti-Semitism. It's just kind of what is, you know, who are these humans impacted by the story, and how do their stories touch each and every one of us, and so humanity is that word for me. That's at the heart of this book.

Kate Carpenter 48:24
Are there other people who you read as inspiration for your writing?

Catherine Grace Katz 48:28
So, I mean, like I, I would say I read definitely more fiction than nonfiction, actually, and I think that that is kind of probably not surprising though. If you read, you know, the pacing and development and narrative tension of a novel, I feel like is the most instructive kind of guide for creating that propulsive energy. I love reading like murder mysteries, spy thrillers, things like that. I've been on a huge Tana French kick lately. I have one left, and I'm just like, I've got to wait for a moment where I can really enjoy this. Patrick Radden Keefe is one of my favorite writers today on the nonfiction front. He comes from the world of journalism, but his stories are just-they're magnetic, they're propulsive, and he writes in a way that's so riveting, where there's you know no word wasted, but not in a way of trying to kind of show off what a brilliant writer he is! It just comes through so implicitly. I just read London Falling. I absolutely love it. Say Nothing is incredible. But there are a couple of books that I did go back and read just to kind of you know get immersed in the time period, and then kind of also you know the kind of thinking about writing tragedy. And if I were ever to teach a class, I would love to teach a class about writing tragedy, and it's funny because I'm a really happy, like optimistic, smiley person. But I love reading really tragic stories. I love melodramas. I love watching old movies on TCM, Hitchcock movies. Probably like the movies and the novels almost like drive the way that I think about crafting a story more than other nonfiction. Just you know, for kind of a crafting element, but I did go back and reread Young Men and Fire before I started working on this book, and it just the things that I underlined a million times then I like re underlined a million times now, and I think that book taught me more about writing a tragedy, especially kind of like one told through multiple perspectives than anything else that I've read. So if anyone out there has not read Norman MacLean, yes, A River Runs Through It is amazing, but you must read Young Men and Fire.

Kate Carpenter 50:31
Before I let you go, I do want to ask you. This is always a deeply unfair question to ask someone who just has a new book coming out, but I'm always curious to know if people are already working on new things. If you if you're eager to start the next project as you're promoting this one, do you have something?

Catherine Grace Katz 50:44
I'm very eager to start the next project. I have a strong idea of what I want to do next. I have not talked to my editor about it yet, so just say I I loved writing about the Russians in my first book. The Germans are interesting too. They're a little more on the nose. I love. I mean that's a gross overgeneralization stereotype for the Germans. I'm very very sorry for all the German listeners out there. I love you all. For the Russians, though, there's just this like really interesting cultural, just kind of convergence of beauty and elegance in their ballet and music and literature just contrasted with the cold brutality of so much of Russian history, whether it was the Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, Russian Federation today, and I just find the Russians just endlessly intriguing. And so I would be very drawn to writing another story that's very kind of like Russia-Soviet focused. I have ideas for other things that are completely unrelated as well. You know, new ideas are always popping up to me. Some that I think, this is a book. Others, I'm like, maybe this is like a you know a a limited series podcast. You know, I love things like um Philippe Sands' The Ratline and Helena Merriman's Tunnel, Tunnel followed by a number Tunnel 42, not 42, but Tunnel and a number [29]. Anyway, it was awesome, and so I could see myself maybe doing some of that. Yeah, I think there are different ways to tell stories, and I think some things kind of lend themselves to different kinds of storytelling better. And I would love to be able to explore all of those.

Kate Carpenter 52:19
Fantastic. Well, Catherine Grace Katz, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast. This was such a pleasure of a book to read. I can't wait to see what comes next. I will not be at all surprised when it becomes a limited TV series that takes us into the Hindenburg.

Catherine Grace Katz 52:34
Fingers crossed.

Kate Carpenter 52:35
Thank you for joining me to talk about your writing process.

Catherine Grace Katz 52:38
Thank you, thank you, and thank you for giving authors a platform to talk about the craft of writing and the research process, and just you know, all of that goes into writing a book. It's not just the the story itself. So thank you very much for a venue to be able to talk about that and to learn from other authors about how they approach their craft. So I'm really appreciative that you take the time to do this.

Kate Carpenter 52:58
Thanks for joining me and Catherine Grace Katz for this interview, you can get a copy of her book Shadow Before the Flame: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Prelude to War through the link in the show notes. You'll also find links to the other books mentioned in our conversation, and special thanks to this episode's guest producer, Brendan O'Meara, for connecting me with Catherine. Brendan is the host of the fantastic podcast Creative Nonfiction, where he interviews nonfiction writers of all stripes. I have been a fan for years. He now also publishes the newsletter Pitch Club, in which freelance writers break down their pitches. It's an indispensable resource for any working writer. I'll add links to both of those in the show notes too, so you can check them out. And if you haven't already, head to draftingthepast.com to subscribe for updates on the podcast and all the new articles coming your way in just a few weeks. You can sign up for free, or you can choose a paid subscription so you can do away with those pesky advertisements and support our work. Until next time, remember that friends don't let friends write boring history.