The Memory Palace

True Short Stories of the Past

By: Nate DiMeo

Narrated by: Nate DiMeo, Jad Abumrad, Daniel Alarcón, Betsy Brandt, Carrie Coon, Hrishikesh Hirway, Dominic Hoffman, Rebecca Lowman, Roman Mars, Robin Miles, Ryan Reynolds, Kai Ryssdal, Lili Taylor, full cast

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 come across 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, enchantment awaits you.

©2024 Nate DiMeo (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“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

Not enough of Nate

Part of the joy of The Memory Palace is Nate's low-key narratiion, which allows his stories to shine. The additional narrators are often overwrought and don't seem to understand his sensibility. I began skipping through the stories to find the bits that he read--