Dinner with King Tut : how rogue archaeologists are re-creating the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of lost civilizations / Sam Kean.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

New York Times 's 10 Books our Readers Are Most Excited About | New York Times 's 21 Nonfiction Books Coming This Summer | Boston Globe 's Best Books of Summer 2025 | A Publishers Weekly Most Anticipated Nonfiction Book



From "one of America's smartest and most charming writers" (NPR), an archaeological romp through the entire history of humankind--and through all five senses--from tropical Polynesian islands to forbidding arctic ice floes, and everywhere in between.



Whether it's the mighty pyramids of Egypt or the majestic temples of Mexico, we have a good idea of what the past looked like. But what about our other senses: The tang of Roman fish sauce and the springy crust of Egyptian sourdough? The boom of medieval cannons and the clash of Viking swords? The frenzied plays of an Aztec ballgame...and the chilling reality that the losers might also lose their lives?



History often neglects the tastes, textures, sounds, and smells that were an intimate part of our ancestors' lives, but a new generation of researchers is resurrecting those hidden details, pioneering an exciting new discipline called experimental archaeology. These are scientists gone rogue: They make human mummies. They investigate the unsolved murders of ancient bog bodies. They carve primitive spears and go hunting, then knap their own obsidian blades to skin the game. They build perilous boats and plunge out onto the open sea--all in the name of experiencing history as it was, with all its dangers, disappointments, and unexpected delights.



Beloved author Sam Kean joins these experimental archaeologists on their adventures across the globe, from the Andes to the South Seas. He fires medieval catapults, tries his hand at ancient surgery and tattooing, builds Roman-style roads--and, in novelistic interludes, spins gripping tales about the lives of our ancestors with vivid imagination and his signature meticulous research.



Lively, offbeat, and filled with stunning revelations about our past, Dinner with King Tut sheds light on days long gone and the intrepid experts resurrecting them today, with startling, lifelike detail and more than a few laughs along the way.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

In this charming romp through the world of experimental archaeology, bestseller Kean (The Icepick Surgeon) profiles the "lab geeks" and "screwball enthusiasts" who investigate the "sensory-rich" qualities of history, from the "crab-like odor of a deer hide as you tan it" to "the salty pinch of fermented Roman fish sauce." Among those spotlighted is researcher Lyn Wadley, who studies "the first beds in human history"--200,000-year-old cliffside ledges in South Africa constructed of "layers of ash and plant matter" and "broad leaves from the aromatic Cape quince tree." Recreating the beds and sleeping overnight in them in a cave, Wadley and a team of volunteers discover that the ancient accommodations are not only "comfortable," but have "a fresh, fruity odor that keeps away mosquitos." Another group of archeologists "skin and deflesh" an elephant--one that died of natural causes--with Stone Age tools; others brew ancient Egyptian beer that turns out tasting like kombucha. The most extreme of all are Egyptologists Bob Brier and Ronn Wade, who in 1994 mummified a human corpse--one donated to science--using "replicas of pharaonic-era tools." (Kean wryly notes that their experiments "proved controversial.") This idiosyncratic and impressively researched account takes readers to the fringes of knowledge production, revealing along the way that there is as much art as there is science to the study of history. It's a delight. (July)

Kirkus Book Review

Reviving the past by reenacting the rituals of daily life. Fascinated by history but bored by dusty, tedious archaeological digs, science author Kean dives into the field of experimental archaeology. Some are real archaeologists, others are "screwball enthusiasts" or "hardcore lab geeks," the author writes, but most, like him, simply yearn to connect with traditions that defined our ancestors. To do this, Kean learns certain skills, like brewing beer and baking bread as did the ancient Egyptians, making weapons out of rocks and obsidian as was done in Africa 75,000 years ago, and even tattooing in the methods of people who lived in 500 A.D. in what is now Northern California. In the process, the author expands our understanding of what life was like back then and raises questions about long-held assumptions. For instance, wood is less likely to survive with time at archaeological sites. "Maybe the stuff we don't find"--like wood--"is the stuff they cared about," one expert muses. "Maybe instead of the Stone Age, we should call it the Wood Age." This kind of insight can only be gleaned from actually making weapons from rocks and sticks, Kean writes. Along the way, he mummifies his own fish as an experiment and learns a Mesoamerican ballgame in which players bat around rubber balls with their hips. Kean's visits with experts make for fun reading and forge a factual framework for the book, but the most gripping parts are the fiction narratives he intersperses with the nonfiction sections. The author imagines characters that leap off the page. Their challenges are immense, whether it's a hapless tomb thief or a man's discovery that, while he went out to gather acorns, his pregnant wife was bludgeoned by a rival. Informed by what Kean has learned about the realities of life for the ancients, his riveting fictional sagas make this book very hard to put down. A fast-paced, vividly written tale that brings lost civilizations into sharp focus. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.