The Memory Palace

A vivid collection of surprising true stories that brings to life long-forgotten icons, heroes who never got their due, and ordinary people who never made it to the history books, from the creator of the popular podcast The Memory Palace.

What was Dreamland, Brooklyn’s most popular attraction, like before it burned down?
Whatever happened to Shipwreck Kelly?
What were the glistening orbs John Glenn saw from his capsule on his first trip to space?

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.  

Each one of these poignant, vivid stories brings the past completely alive with the potential to shift our perspectives on the world today and to send readers out searching for all of the hidden stories it contains, just beyond the surface.