The Memory Palace - by Nate Dimeo (Hardcover)

About the Book

"For more than a decade, Nate DiMeo has brought the big and small of American history to life in The Memory Palace, a podcast of crystalline short stories that are all completely true. In this beautifully designed collection, where DiMeo takes advantage of the visual form of a book by creating striking juxtapositions between images and text, he gathers the best of the show and adds brand-new stories exclusive to the book, which especially take their inspiration from photographs and the emergence of photography. The collection adds up to a unique take on the past that asks what gets to count as history in the first place, draws deep meaning from forgotten lives, and often dives into past crazes and the sometimes humorous and sometimes devastating fact that what or who is popular in one moment can become a barely remembered curiosity in the next. He resurrects stories that deserve to be memorialized, like that of the Surfmen of the Outer Banks who saved countless sailors' lives and the workers who risked theirs daily to dig the base of the Brooklyn Bridge"--

Book Synopsis

Incredible true stories reveal strange new magic in American history in this wondrous first book from the creator of the award-winning podcast The Memory Palace.

"One doesn't often find the words imagination and history in the same sentence. Nate DiMeo has forever woven them together. The Memory Palace wants you to linger, to stay awhile, and find a deeper meaning both in the stories of the past and perhaps in your own life as well."--Ken Burns

The Memory Palace is a collection of crystalline historical tales that read like luminous short fiction and, like Nate DiMeo's acclaimed podcast of the same name, conjure lost moments and forgotten figures who are calling out across time to be remembered.

Space capsules filled with fruit flies and future senators. A socialite scientist who gives up her glamorous life to follow love and the elusive prairie chicken. A boy genius on a path to change the world who gets lost in the theoretical possibilities of streetcar transfers. An enslaved man who steals a boat and charts a course that leads him to freedom, war, and Congress. A farmer's wife who puts down her butter churn, picks up the butter, and becomes an international art star. An amusement park glowing at the water's edge when electric lights are a brand-new thing. This cabinet of curiosities teems with wonder.

For fifteen years, Nate DiMeo has turned to the past to make sense of the way we live today, finding beauty and meaning in history's dustier corners, holding things up to the light and weaving facts, keen insight, wit, and poignant observation into unforgettable tales. With new stories and treasured favorites from the beloved podcast assembled alongside dynamic illustrations and archival photographs for the first time, enchantment awaits you.

Review Quotes

"One doesn't often find the words imagination and history in the same sentence. Nate DiMeo has forever woven them together. He asks each of us to engage in an act of empathetic imagination, to see in the stories of others--people who lived before us--something inherently human, something that transcends time and provides us with a feeling of understanding and, quite often, joy. The Memory Place wants you to linger, to stay awhile, and find a deeper meaning both in the stories of the past and perhaps in your own life as well."--Ken Burns, filmmaker

"Nate DiMeo delves through history with a poet's eye, recovering the strange and revealing and even wonderful detritus of our past and reflecting on it in profound ways. The Memory Palace is a beautiful, moving, and often funny book made out of our collective history and DiMeo's unique sensibility."--Phil Klay, National Book Award-winning author of Missionaries

"Nate DiMeo has an uncanny ability to describe these small, beautiful moments in history that will delight your curiosity, elucidate our shared humanity, and maybe even break your heart. The short, perfect stories of The Memory Palace will stick with you."--Roman Mars, author of The 99% Invisible City

"I love Nate DiMeo's singular gift for uncovering small stories about very big things. The Memory Palace is like an impeccably curated museum of humanity, shown in all its weird, sad, gleeful, and idiosyncratic glory."--Jon Mooallem, author of Serious Face

"The only problem with The Memory Palace--an incredible book, executed beautifully--is that for months after you read it you will repeat the stories to everyone you meet, everywhere you go. Nate DiMeo has magically curated American history and unearthed dozens of incredible stories, every one a pure delight, and written about them the way only he can--with humor, passion, and poetry. This is a book everyone in your life will love and cherish."--Michael Schur, author of How to Be Perfect and creator of The Good Place

"A caravan of curiosities . . . In mining 'the space between the story of our lives and those lives as we live them, ' DiMeo plays magician, conjuring the enchantments that reside in the subtle and unseen, often moment to moment. . . . DiMeo's illumination of small wonders edifies and entertains."--Kirkus Reviews

"Readers will feel a shiver of recognition and understanding--making a second or third visit to DiMeo's memory palace both irresistible and gratifying."--BookPage

"A charming array of underknown stories about people, animals, and objects, and their effect on the zeitgeist . . . The Memory Palace is a wonderful collection of historical vignettes portraying fateful moments in time with often-enduring consequences. DiMeo's flair for the short history is evident, and his book is ceaselessly entertaining."--Booklist

About the Author

Nate DiMeo is the creator and host of The Memory Palace, a Peabody Award finalist and among the first group of podcasts preserved by the Library of Congress. He was previously the artist in residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he has performed stories from The Memory Palace live with music, pictures, and animation all over the United States and Canada, as well as in England, Ireland, and Australia. DiMeo is the co-author of Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America, a finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Prior to producing The Memory Palace, DiMeo spent a decade in public radio and could be heard on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, or Marketplace. He has written for NBC's Parks and Recreation and ABC's The Astronaut Wives Club.