The Memory Palace: True Short Stories of the Past

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.

“Nate DiMeo zooms in on stories of mishap, invention and adventure. . . . These brief historical lessons read like exquisite short stories, each of them revealing something profound about history and humanity.”—The Guardian

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.

“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

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.