Dinner with King Tut is a strange sort of beast: let’s call it an anti-sphinx. Like the sphinx it’s composed of three dissimilar parts—not the face of a woman, the wings of a bird and the haunches of a lion, but science, fiction (but not science fiction) and DIY—where DIY involves the author learning how to knap stones, how to tattoo himself, to style hair like an ancient Roman matron, bake bread for Egyptian pyramid builders, and operate a trebuchet, among other skills once necessary for a precarious survival in different eras at different points on the globe. Also tanning and trepanning.
And this sphinx not only poses riddles it tries its best to answer them, through the discipline of experimental archaeology. Which, if you (like me) have never heard of this field, you’re in for a series of fascinating discoveries, from a Turkish city where one’s relatives where buried beneath one’s bed to the unusual height of Chinese eunuchs.
Each chapter includes a wealth of information about a particular culture, a fictional tale which is illustrative of life (and death) in that culture, and the author’s own experiments (usually under the supervision of an expert, who may be a “professional” archaeologist or may be an “amateur” with a burning passion for their subject). The fictional tales almost work like mysteries, with the other two sections providing the clues necessary to solve them.
And: it works. And: it’s informative. And: wonder of wonders: it’s fun. Especially eye-opening for me was the chapter on the Polynesian navigators and settlers of Oceania. Science writer Sam Keane steers us with bonhomie and amazing perseverance through a series of experiences (he suggests that experimental archaeology should be called experiential archaeology) at sometimes considerable risk of bodily harm and even oftener the ruination of his taste buds. If you thought archaeology was sifting through sand for broken bits of pot sherds, this book will disabuse you of that notion. Did I mention fun?

I received a free DRC of this book through Netgalley. It is super informative and interesting to read except for a few passages that I, as a 3rd generation vegetarian, had to pass over quite quickly. The book makes learning fun. I found it to be well-written and covering diverse parts of the world which was nice to have an overview of many different cultures and points in time. I would recommend this book not just to people interested in archaeology, but any one who is alive since it covers so many different points of interest.

Like his others, this one is best enjoyed in print because of visual embellishments. The title makes me swivel for a closer look, but poking my nose into the effects of his writing and investigations had me skipping things I was supposed to do so I could get back into the book. It's not just about food, but about lives, and famines, and behavioral norms, and a whole lot more. I've already preordered a print copy, but it will probably get feet. By the way, it's a lot of fun as well.
I requested and received a temporary uncorrected digital galley edition from Little, Brown and Company via NetGalley. Pub Date Jul 08, 2025 ****** review
#DinnerWithKingTut by Sam Kean @historyschmistory @littlebrown #sensoryarchaeology
#lostcivilizations #culinaryarchaeology #dramaticizednonfiction #photographs #drawings
#experimentalarchaeology Like his others, this one is best enjoyed in print because of visual embellishments. The title makes me swivel for a closer look, but poking my nose into the effects of his writing and investigations had me skipping things I was supposed to do so I could get back into the book. It's not just about food, but about lives, and famines, and behavioral norms, and a whole lot more. I've already preordered a print copy, but it will probably get feet. By the way, it's a lot of fun as well.
I requested and received a temporary uncorrected digital galley edition from Little, Brown and Company via NetGalley. Pub Date Jul 08, 2025 ****** review
#DinnerWithKingTut by Sam Kean @historyschmistory @littlebrown #sensoryarchaeology
#lostcivilizations #culinaryarchaeology #dramaticizednonfiction #photographs #drawings
#experimentalarchaeology

This is a truly enjoyable non-fiction read which also scratches your fiction short story itch at the same time. Sam Kean investigates the many ways in which archaeologists, historians, and hobbyists have gone about trying to solve big and small questions which archaeology and historical studies alone have failed to such as how did Romans actually make the elaborate hairstyles seen in sculpture or did weird Viking-era remedies actually work to help cure injuries. Mr. Kean describes the methods which different people have used to try and answer these questions, as well as taking their advice and trying some of them himself (even so far as getting and giving a tattoo). He covers different places and times starting in pre-historic Africa 75,000 years ago and going forward to Mexico around 1500. For each place at time he interweaves a short story of his own creation in which he supposes how actual people might have used these technologies in their lives. These stories depict both tragic and triumphant episodes that mostly ring true, and are at the very least plausible. Highly recommended, especially for anyone interested in history who normally dislikes conventional non-fiction.

Archeology no longer only relies on the tedious labor of shifting sand and dirt for discoveries. Today, experimental archeology endeavors to “recreate the past.”

To understand what life was like for early humans and in past civilizations, Sam Kean ate insects and blubber, got a tattoo, made beer and bread, and gamely battered his body in an ancient Aztec game. He trepanated a skull and made a mummy. He tanned leather with deer brains.

Kean’s book is organized by an eras of history. To understand daily life in each era, he creates an accompanying fictional story and then describes the experiments that recreate the foods, culture, and daily life referred to in the story.

I loved this lively, entertaining, informative, and sometimes stomach-turning book. Kean is intrepid! I would not try half of the experiments he describes!

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

Such a different and fun filled read with amazing revelations from experimental archaeologists on advertures all over the world. I could not put it down and couldn't wait for the next adventure in each chapter.

I'm always looking forward to the next Sam Kean book. What will it be this time? Genetics? Medical quacks? Spies? Oo, experimental archeology! This is going to be fun! And it was, I mean, Sam Kean, how could it not?

Let's face it, talking about ancient things that have been dug up is fascinating, but figuring out how ancient cultures used those things brings the cultures to life - and makes for amusing tales. In this book, Kean alternates between short narratives showing what someone long ago may have experienced and the importance of various tools to their life and Sam attempting to create and use those things, with varying degrees of success, under the guidance of contemporary enthusiasts. The result is informative, enlightening, and absolutely entertaining.

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown, and Company for making an advance copy of this book available for an honest review.

I had high hopes when I downloaded this book, but it ended up being entirely too academic for my preferences. The topics are super cool, but there is almost no application to what we could do with the information. Some of the information is also problematic in terms of the author's word usage. I think this is the case of someone so focused on their topic that they don't care that their word usage is incorrect.

I picked up this book because I like the author, but it turned out to be a fun surprise. This book is a mix of non-fiction research and fictional stories based on the research. I'm more of a non-fiction fan, but it was interesting to see how the author who researched the book interpreted it into a story. There is even a bit of personal experience mixed in that I also enjoyed. I would recommend this book to fiction, and non-fiction lovers alike and hope that we see more of this mix from the author in the future. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy. I enjoyed it very much!

My thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for an advance copy of this book that is both a history, and an exploration of the lives of our ancestors, and how much of what we assume their lives were like, turn out to be far different when put to the test.

I work with a guy who can tell you anything about cars, trucks really anything with 4-wheels and a combustion engine. Common problems with 1971 Fiat Models, he can tell you. The size of the air filter on a 81 Caprice Classic, he will know. I know for a fact that he loves nothing more than paging through Chilton car repair books, its how he relaxes. However he has, in the time I have known him, never had a car over 8 years old, always brings said car in for servicing at the dealer. And at least a couple of times a year will confuse the diesel and gasoline pumps at the gas station. Book sense, my friend is a genius, practical, well not so much. Much of what we know of our ancestors in the past is based on books, stories, and ideas that have not really been tested in the real world. One can read and watch hundreds of articles on creating a friction fire, but outside of youtube and that prepper book how many people can actually do it, when cold, wet, lacking sun, and with the wolves howling. Sam Kean has written many books on science, in his latest he tries to see if what we think we know about the lives of others is true. Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists Are Recreating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations is a combination of how-to, how-not-to, and how-not-to-hurt-oneself, and history dealing with what many assume the past was like, and those who are doing their best to actually recreate these assumptions, and learning far more about how adaptable humans can be.

The book is broken into different chapters dealing with people in the past in both different eras, and different extremes. The cold of Alaska, the wide oceans of the South Seas, ancient Rome, Ireland, South America and more. These chapters are broken into both a fiction part and a nonfiction part. The fiction deals with people of the time, hunters, doctors, navigator, warriors and spies, their life, and how the deal with difficulties, like food, water, and shelter. Escaping the slave masters, hunting giant slothes, elephants, seals and more. Even small things like how they styled their hair, the food they ate, and the homes they live in. The nonfiction is Kean doing his best to figure out, outside of books and by practical experience seeing what their lives were like. Kean travels all over the world, learning how cannons work, forming knives from rocks, starting fires. Even shaping a knife from dung. Kean gets lots of bruises, lots of cuts, a tattoo, tattoos someone and even does brain surgery. Plus gets to try wonderful foods, like bugs, blubber, breads and more.

I was not sure what this book was about, but as a fan of the author I knew it would be interesting. This book was much more than that. Every page has something fascinating, something new, from simple tricks to make a knife, to how to make Roman styled hair, shaping shelters and much more. Kean has done a lot of working finding researchers who might not be considered experts in their field, but have the practical knowledge to grasp what it takes to live in the times they study. Kean gets cut, bruised, and a little food poisoned for our enjoyment, and I am thankful. Kean is a great writer, with the mix of fiction and nonfiction really meddling together to give a clear view of what life was like in the past. The knowledge that people had, the way they dealt with things kind of gives me hope for our future.

There are so many people who would enjoy this. Preppers well get a lot of practical information, and learn to practice, practice practice, before one tries to survive for real. People interested in history will learn quite a lot. Role players will get a real sense to what life was like, and could add a lot to their characters and their adventures. And nerds like myself will love all the great information. I have long enjoyed Kean's work, this is one of his best.

3. Fans of archeology will love this one. I did learn a lot. However, as a high school teacher, this book has very limited application. It’s tremendously detailed and well researched, but won’t hold the interest of teens for long. I like how it’s balanced between a conventional non fiction read and fictionalized stories of how people from the focus time would experience their lives. The format and look into experiential archeology is super, but most young adults reads won’t stay interested.

4.5--funny, relatable, interesting! it led me to do more research on my own and i know i will be sharing the fun facts i learned from this book with people for years to come. one of my favorite things about studying history is how much people have always been people, and i loved how much this was emphasized through the stories, research, and cultural continuity explored in this book.

"Dinner with King Tut" is a book that asks us to think about history in a wider angle--in particular, looking at the field of so-called experimental archaeology, in which individuals (both academics and non) are trying to decipher how ancient individuals did things: what they ate, their weapons, their clothes, their hair, and so forth. In each chapter, author Sam Kean looks at a different period of history from the dawn of time (pre-civilization) to the Spanish invasion of Mexico. The book is set up creatively, using a fictional narrative of everyday life in different periods as a springboard to discuss the enter the topics of the chapter.

What's good: The topics are interesting and the author is fearless. (He's willing to eat and do things that goodness knows I would never do!) He makes a very persuasive case for the importance of material culture, and experiencing it, in understanding the past.

What's iffier: In hindsight, the book often looks toward stereotypical topics for its chapter inspirations. For Egypt, we're talking about mummies and tomb raiding. (Not what Tut ate, despite the title.) For China, eunuchs. For the Aztecs, their brutality.

In addition, the author awkwardly juggles his own position throughout this. On the one hand, the title centers the people of today trying to understand the material past, but we spend a lot of time on Kean's efforts to complete the same tasks. While he highlights the experts, it's hard to say if that's really the center of the story--is it what the ancient people did, is it the experiences of a modern person trying these things (and discovering their difficulties or challenges), or is it the "rogue archaeologists" promised in the title? (And they're not always rogue, for the record, but I know the title is often up to the publishers rather than the author.)

What's something I would have wished: Some kind of extended information on how to do some of these things at home. Could we get a modernized recipe for Aztec frozen potatoes, for example? Suggestions about how to make fire? A recipe or suggested exercise per chapter? This would take the book from a view into the past into an invitation to join it. There is bonus material, for the record, on the author's site, but it doesn't really fill this need.

History is a little dry for my taste. Luckily, Sam Kean agrees and this book could not be any more fun. Experimental archeology brings the past to life in a dynamic way and is leading to advances in our understanding of history. This volume combines the author’s forays into this new field, trying to learn more about how our ancestors lived; with fictional stories based on these findings. From Africa 75,000 years ago to the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the 1500’s AD, the book visits some of the important cultures across the world, from Egypt and Rome to China and Northern Alaska. Stories of heartbreak that show how hard life was for everyone, even those in positions of privilege, or in societies that were more equalitarian than you’d think. Kean recreates worlds where a small injury could end your life, where you never knew where your next meal would come from or where finding water (or something to drink) required more resourcefulness than opening a faucet. Experimental archeologists prove how hard things were in the past, and Kean is right there to write about it. As an animal lover, the parts about hunting or animal death in most of the stories were hard to read (I skipped them altogether), and I can’t imagine how the author, a vegetarian like me, could make himself eat animals for the sake of his book (or perform some of experiments on dead critters). Besides that, I would not recommend this to squeamish readers because some of the content was gnarly. I didn’t mind, and even perused the bonus pictures on the author’s website (https://samkean.com/). I could not turn my eyes away from the trepanation photos, what’s wrong with me? So if you want to know how the Romans accomplished those awesome hairdos, how eunuchs lived in ancient China or how Medieval monks survived the Vikings, get this book!
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/Little, Brown and Company.

My nerdy little heart loves this book. It’s part nonfiction focused on archeology and those who strive to not only dig up the past but recreate the environments and steps used to get to what we see today and a factionalized story interspersed to portray what a look back thousands of years may have been like. A day in the life if you will.

The stories span the globe and millennia. Sam Kean also gets very hands on in his attempts to also recreate some on the artifacts discussed in the book (tanning salmon skin in uterine in your bathroom, anyone)?

I’ve read quite a few of Sam Kean’s book and while I love them all this one is even more personable with the “at home” tests.

I think I expected a fairly trivial, superficial reading experience: entertaining, but maybe kind of predictable. I mean, King Tut, the epitome of pop culture's intersection with archaeology, is the title character, right?

Instead, every page contained a surfeit of surprise. The structure of the book worked really well. Each chapter focuses on a particular place and point in time, and alternates between a non-fiction account of the author's and others' experimental archaeology recreating specific processes or exepriences from that era, and a fictional story that placed the elements of the non-fiction narrative into the context of characters who would have lived them. Some of the fictional stories were engaging enough I would have liked to keep reading them as a longer historical novel.

Kean has an approachable style that brings the reader right into the thick of things, whether the thundering of conquistador cannons or the flavors of a Roman feast.

Highly recommend, but with caution: if you're a squeamish person, this book vividly describes probably everything in the world it's possible to be squeamish about.

Pleased to have read an ARC via NetGalley.

Thank you NetGalley for a pre-release of Dinner with King Tut.

I absolutely love Sam Kean’s novels, and his newest doesn’t disappoint. His master storytelling draws the reader in, hungry for more. He brilliantly digests science into interesting, and engaging content for non-technical audiences. Get your copy!

I loved this book. I had not previously known that the field of experimental archeology even existed. Sam Kean delves into the topic deeply, through the use of wonderful, evocative fiction about the era being discussed and through his active involvement in experiments. Kean uses his great sense of humour to describe these experiments and fortunately, it seems, no authors were injured during the production of this book. I love Kean’s writing style; conversational and friendly. Overall I thought that this was a great read. Thank you to Netgalley and Little, Brown and Company for the advance reader copy.

Dinner with King Tut its another dive into the world of history from Sam Kean. This time he leaps into the world of experimental archeology. Kean's ability to to make the technical and science world accessible to the layman is approaching Mary Roach levels. He writes with the ""everyman" eye. In "Dinner with King Tut," he does something new. He interlaces his real world experiences with fictional accounts of what might have been in that given era. Some of them are little silly but Kean does a good job of giving a sense of what might have been. It may not be what Kean fans like but it's a worthy effort. Really enjoyed this latest Kean book.. Thanks to #netgalley and #littlebrownandcompany for the opportunity to preview this book.

This book was not consistent parts of it really got and kept my attention other parts I kept getting distracted and could not focus on the book.
I enjoyed learning about experimental archaeology how people are truly bringing history to life. Some of the historical fiction stories were very interesting and showed how people lived. But some of them were very repetitive, like different place but same story.
I did like the set up of the book though how the chapters were broken up but did not like repeatedly seeing Wikipedia as a sited source was there really no other sources to get photos and information from?