Synopses & Reviews
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
“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
“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, producer, and host of The Memory Palace, a podcast from Radiotopia and PRX. He was previously the artist in residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and has performed stories from The Memory Palace in theaters all over the United States, as well as Canada, England, Ireland, and in a field at a rock festival in Tasmania. He has reported stories for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and All Things Consider and American Public Media’s Marketplace, as well as numerous other public radio programs. He is the co-author of Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America, for which he was a finalist for the Thurber Prize in American Humor. He has written for NBC’s Parks and Recreation and the ABC miniseries, The Astronaut Wives’ Club. He lives in Los Angeles by way of Providence, Rhode Island.