I'm honestly not sure what exactly I was expecting from this book [my first Sam Kean, though I own several of his other books that are currently languishing on my TBR shelves], but what I got was not it. NOT that that is a bad thing - indeed, it was rather a great way to read this book as there is a lot of a lot going on here and not knowing what was coming next just made the book even better.

Filled with some of the most interesting history I'd never heard of [and I read a LOT of history], as well as some seriously gruesome events [the "making of" eunuchs was particularly...ummm...icky, and my whole body clenched during that particular passage, and I do not even have those parts], this book kept me fully engaged [with the exception of one chapter that bored me to tears. No, I am not sharing which one] from page one and I am still thinking about it days after finishing it. Guess that means its time to finally dust off the other books I have from this author and dive in. :-)

Thank you to NetGalley, Sam Kean, and Little, Brown, and Company for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This wasn’t really what I was looking for. It is a somewhat awkward hybrid of history, instruction from archeologists, experiments by the author (like tanning leather and tattooing) and fictional interludes as imagined by the author. I still don’t know what King Tut ate,but there was a lot of bread n Egypt,

A lot of the things that the experimental archeologists are studying in this book just don’t seem that useful to me (like eunuchs in China or grueling Aztec games). However, there is some interesting information here. 3.5 stars

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Archaeology always fascinates- this is a fun one. Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC. I can only imagine what the archaeologists and anthropologists of the future are going to deduce about how we live today.

We can learn a lot from what civilizations leave behind, but there are still gaps. What did they eat? What did they see and smell when they opened their eyes each morning? This is what experimental archeology hopes to find out. Kean takes readers to eleven eras of human history (and around the globe) and introduces them to people trying to peek into the daily lives of people in the past.
Dinner with King Tut is an engaging read, and I appreciate that Kean's focus was worldwide and included the world of degreed scientists and passionate amateurs. I personally found the fictional stories woven throughout each chapter annoying and unnecessary, detracting from the rest of the book.
One thing that left me a little concerned was the study of human remains in chapter 2. In the US, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act has museums removing human remains and funerary objects from display and returning them to descendants and tribes. I am unfamiliar with legislation in South American countries, but I'd imagine feelings towards the procession and study of remains are similar. This chapter treats the huntress as an exciting discovery and not the remains of an individual whose burial was disturbed in the name of science.

Sam Kean is so good at blending information and entertainment. He’s probably better at it than anyone else who writes about science.

This wasn’t my favorite Kean book because there’s just way too much gross medical stuff for my taste, but no one can deny that the man is a tremendous researcher and exceptionally good at distilling that research into something that is both fun to read and informative.

I wish there hadn’t been so much focus on all the medical stuff, but perhaps that will be more enjoyable for other readers than it was for me. There’s still plenty of fascinating content here. The trebuchets! The Roman hairstyles! I enjoyed the way Kean blended his invented tales of historical characters with his experiences with current experts on the topics at hand.

Nothing will ever beat The Disappearing Spoon for me, but Kean is always a delight to read.

Thank you NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for an ARC of this book!

Sam Keane has created an experimental archeology artifact in literature form. Did this book just make me interested in history for the first time??!! I hope not because I have no available space on my TBR, but I fear it’s true! 😅

I’ve always been a fan of hands-on work when it comes to education; though the budgeting is inevitably higher, having experiences outside the classroom often trumps anything that a student could read about in a book. For instance, even in college I was given the opportunity to throw clay pottery on a wheel to make my own authentic kylix, and it’s given me a deeper appreciation for the craft than any visit to a museum. The larger field of frontline research that makes these opportunities possible is called “experimental archeology.” Though some individual cultures have maintained ancient practices as ritual across the ages, an academic appreciation for this approach has only come into being over the last century or so. In Dinner with King Tut, Sam Kean has detailed a handful of ongoing research in the field taking place across many different continents to give the reader a fuller perspective into the state of the study as a whole.

For those who remember my review of Gareth Harney’s A History of Ancient Rome in Twelve Coins, the overall structure of this work will be familiar. Both books split their chapters into three parts: the first half acts as a narrativization of historical events, then a second half combines the scientific inquiry and personal experiences with those involved in the field in order to back up why that narrative reflects a truth about the ancient world. That book chiefly separated the fictional parts from the research in two different sections per chapter, but Kean intertwines new information about artifacts in the stories as they arise in his own discussions with experts. I made note of how much I enjoyed this framing in the earlier review, and this iteration only improved upon the formula. The stories are very cut-and-dry from beginning to end. The plots are simple, the characters are realistic, and the elements from the research are well-integrated into the world. Nothing feels forced or out of place at all, and jumping from reality to fiction more often gives the book its own kind of pace.

I was elated to find mention of Salima Ikram’s work in the chapters on mummification. Her advice was cited prominently in a YouTube video about recreating the process on a chicken I watched a few months ago, and being able to recognize an expert in the field in that fashion helped to build my trust with the author. Every chapter presents its theories as very promising hypotheses rather than a settled matter of scientific debate, so I never truly felt the urge to investigate any outlandish claims because there was no true effort to sway me into believing them. That being said, having this one connection to proper academia did bolster my trust in everything Kean wrote about.

Along that same line, this whole project acts as a decent rebuttal to Graham Hancock’s whole schtick whether or not the author recognizes it. That fraud claims that there’s no way to make a name for oneself in the archeological world without the express approval of the ivory towers of academia. True, some of the names featured in Kean’s book come from a scholarly background, but many others are happy to operate on the fringes. They face a somewhat uphill battle towards publication in proper academic journals, but they do research in order to find the truth and keep knowledge alive, not for some credit on a piece of paper. Some of the theories about cultural practices, like sleeping arrangements in caves, unfortunately do border on the unprovable even if they do reflect a truth about the ancient world, but that doesn’t mean there’s a vast conspiracy working against anyone going against the mainstream. It’s also worth pointing out how all these figures in experimental archeology operate on a budget much smaller than Hancock’s awful tv show and have made less than his trashy books, which begs the question why they’ve found so much more verifiable information than he has.

Fans of archeology will naturally enjoy this book on its own merits, but it may find a secondary audience in a strange place. As I came to the last chapters, the structure of the nonfiction sections further reminded me of Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. Both works are incredibly good at taking rather mundane scenarios about real-life experiences and injecting a dose of magical thinking into them so that they feel more like fiction. Those outside the field of the classics but who also enjoyed that book would certainly find their interest piqued by Kean’s work here. I give this book 2 stars. Pick up a copy when it releases on July 8th.

Who knew experimental archaeology could be this fun? Sam Kean brings ancient history to life with humor, hands-on adventures, and vivid storytelling. Dinner with King Tut is a wild, fascinating ride through the senses of the past.

Traditional archaeology can give us a glimpse of what life was like for various civilizations of the past, but it's never the full story. This is where experimental archaeology comes in, people who are attempting to re-create the processes of past lives by attempting to cook, carve, and recreate food, weapons, and clothes among other things that you need to survive. Sam Kean does a bunch of experimental archaeology himself and intersperses these experiments with fictional stories of what the life of a person in the time period would be like if they were creating leather, cooking pots, or knapping stone tools. A very engaging read, both the practical, if sometimes gross (pre-modern living was hard and bloody) and the fictional sections. Kean has an easy way of writing while still being informative.

Sam Kean is one of my favorite non-fiction writers, and his newest work, Dinner with King Tut, doesn’t disappoint. An exploration of “experimental” or “experiential” archaeology, a field that “puts ideas about the past to the test … to replicate different aspects of our ancestors’ lives … [and] actively recreate the past.” This might mean reconstructing trebuchets to hurl stones at a target, brewing Egyptian beer, or self-medicating with a medieval salve. Kean does all this and more in collaboration with a number of “hardcore lab geeks … traditional archaeologists … grouchy, live off the land survivalists … and screwball enthusiasts.” It’s all both informative and wonderfully entertaining.

Kean divides each chapter into several elements. Formally separated within the chapters are a series of fictional narratives that bring the chapter’s time period/society vividly to life by focusing on a day for of a character/characters who lived at that time. These scenes are well written, vivid as noted, and do an excellent job of connecting the more informational activities and artifacts to embodied people with a full panoply of emotions and desires, while also bringing to life their environment — its sound, smell, feel, and taste — senses typically left behind in traditional archaeological findings. The rest of the chapter, beyond the fictional interludes, is made up of some discussion of the time and culture/society, a specific focus on a particular tool/food/task, etc., and Kean’s hands-on attempts, with help, to resurrect those tools, foods, tasks. It’s all done quite seamlessly, and the fiction and non-fiction elements nicely complement each other.

The included settings/time periods are:
• Africa: 75,000 years ago
• S. America: 7500 years ago
• Turkey: 6500s BC
• Egypt: 2000s BC
• Polynesia: 1000s BC
• California: AD 500s
• Viking Europe: AD 900s
• Northern Alaska: AD 1000s
• China: AD 1200s
• Mexico: AD 1500s

Kean does too much too list all of his activities here, but a few representative examples”
Making an Alaskan cooking pot
Making leather
Firing a trebuchet
Firing a medieval cannon
Mummifying a salmon using urine
Getting and giving tattoos
Knapping stone tools
Firing darts with an atlatl
Helping students build a Roman road
Opening coconuts
Making (and using) a medieval salve
Trepanning a pig skull
Playing an Aztec ballgame
And eating. Lots of eating. Bugs. Blubber. Ancient Roman dishes. More bugs. Lots of bugs.

Kean goes all in and one of the main things he learns (and vividly conveys) is just how hard the past was. What we take for granted — getting food, wearing clothes, picking up meds — was incredibly laborious and time-consuming. Despite that, you never feel Kean isn’t having fun doing all this, even if that isn’t true at any given moment. Nor do you ever feel he is ever less than fully honest. Some of my favorite personalized moments in the book are when he panics over a tattoo artist trying to convince him to get a large shaman tattoo — “I’m one of those people who can’t even tell a barber when I don’t like a haircut — (he gets a small asterisk instead); when he admits to stupidly carrying two buckets of rocks in each loading trip when making the Roman road and then confesses he couldn’t stop carrying two because he didn’t want to look bad in front of middle schoolers; and — my favorite moment — when he spent much of the time during the Aztec ballgame hiding behind an 11-year-old girl and “let[ting] her return shots meant for me” because it hurt too much to play.

Beyond the informative nature of his explorations in terms of better understanding our past and the people who lived in it, Kean also makes a strong argument at the end that “we increasingly live in a world of the ghostly: flickering images, information abstracted to bits” and that experiential archaeology can “provide a welcome corrective” by “making the material a little more spiritual,” helping us to realize that the “tool or textile or meal isn’t just something you bought … it’s something crafted, something hewn, something raised from seed” by you or other people. It’s a strong lesson to close on.

Informative, entertaining, compelling in its fictional elements, funny, self-deprecating, thoughtful, and simply fun, this, like all of Kean’s work I’ve read, is highly recommended.

Dinner with King Tut by Sam Kean is perfect for those who struggle to relate to "dead people in history". Kean humanizes and contextualizes people and history in a way that is engaging and enlightening for all ages. He uses research, experiments, and fictional stories for each time period.

As a homeschool mom, we will be coming back to Dinner with King Tut to enrich our history curriculum and "bring history alive".

Many thanks to NetGalley and Little Brown and Company for the advance copy.

I liked the sections that were pure information. The work of the archeologists and anthropologists was fascinating. However, the sections that were “fictional” were indeed fictional. I liked Sam Kean’s other books, which present real information in a way that is fascinating and fun. This book included sections that didn’t interest me because they weren’t real.

This is a deeply entertaining book about the practical experiences of people in the past. It focuses on experiential archaeology and consults some unusual experts in the technology of our ancestors; it is remarkably hands on (be prepared for descriptions of exactly what deer brains feel like and other detailed sensations). The book covers an intriguing range of civilizations. What surprised me most (and the part of the book that didn't work as well for me) is the choice to include narratives in each chapter so the modern recreations and scientific work is broken up with a short episode following a person in each civilization. Given the number of (justified) questions in the nonfiction sections, the confidence of these stories felt a little false--like looking at outdated dioramas in an aging museum. I enjoyed them, but I enjoyed the nonfiction sections a lot more.

Thanks to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for a free earc in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are all my own.

Experimental archaeology is a fascinating new field of research, and Sam Kean is a skilled popular science writer. However, I found the recreations of ancient people's lives annoying. While it may be useful for grasping the reality of the past, it's just not for me. I much preferred the parts where the author described the work of archaeologists and the challenges they face.

Overall, it's an interesting and informative book. I just would prefer it without the fictional sections.

Thanks to the publisher, Little, Brown and Company, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and Little Brown and Company for an Advanced Reader Copy - pub date 7/8/2025. What a wonderful journey of a book, mixing together a wealth of research and practical experience with the delightful vibes of fictional mini-stories, once again proving that history is always about the humans who lived it. Sure, the events are exciting and important but what really makes people care about what happened is, well... The people's stories. Sam Kean first splits the book into time/place zones and then, within those historical goal posts, he gives you an emotional, researched mini-story of the people who lived to really ground the experiences, technology, etc. To be honest, the range of people Kean interviews in his pursuit of are just as colorful and larger-than-life so you get extra bang for your buck - the fictional people of history and the very real and dedicated experimental archaeologist who are busily recreating the past.

Kean explores hunting techniques like the atlatl or faking an ostrich, technology like trepanation and mummification, and just how insanely hard it is to tan leather. He seeks out all sorts of experts, from colleges to museums to random houses where ordinary people are just Really Into Something Obscure. I mean, who hasn't toyed with the idea of building their own trebuchet or mucked around to figure out the most plausible way to build a pyramid without the use of wheels or pulleys? Written in a very approachable way, the book still provides tons of details and research but leaves enough unsaid that you can go ahead and explore on your own.

Definitely a fun read and a rollicking journey into the human aspect of history.

Absolutely and completely fascinating, I love this to pieces. Kean not only did amazing research and interviews, but I loved how he wrote about the different eras. He did his own experiments and really seemed to embody experimental archaeology. So utterly captivating and full of both entertainment and knowledge. 100% recommend to anyone interested in learning.

Sam Kean has done it again. I have loved each of his books for the way that he imparts serious scientific facts with humor and levity. In this book he does something he hasn't done before - includes fictional tales from the time periods he is exploring to give the reader more insight into what life was like in the centuries past. He does a great job exploring the smells and tastes from years past. Kean opened up a whole new world of history that I hadn't thought of before. Experimental Archeology is a new favorite of mine. Absolutely recommend this book.

Not to be dramatic, but if Sam Kean wrote a 1093509 page book, stream of consciousness, with no editing, it would be my most anticipated book of that year. So, of course, I adored Dinner with King Tut and marveled at how every time I think he's covered all there is to be covered in his wheelhouse, he proves me completely wrong.

In Dinner with King Tut, Sam Kean turns his focus to archaeology, but not the tried and true Indiana Jones story. Instead, Kean focuses on experimental archaeology, a discipline focused on recreating the conditions of archaeological finds to better understand their full implications. This is a bit of a divergence for Kean, who is normally not an active participant in the subject matter of his work. Avid readers may notice a difference in the style as a result but I think it is still exceptionally readable and packed with information in trademark Kean style. A must read for science and history readers in your life.

Interesting format. Author takes what he learned from archaeologists who build their theories from actually doing what they think their research shows. He then weaves in a story about each era into that information. Sometimes it did feel a little repetitive. However, I could see several students being interested in the topic AND it could also be a great mentor text for creative non-fiction writing. But, overall, the book wasn't my cup of tea. Still good and interesting, just not for me.

I’ve enjoyed several other books by this author and couldn’t wait to read this one. Its focus is on experimental archaeology – learning about cultures and people by doing, not simply by digging in the dirt. This book is organized by eras of history, beginning 75,000 years ago in Africa and going through until the Aztecs empire in Mexico.

Unlike the others I’ve read, this book creates a fictional story to illustrate the history he’s portraying, then goes a step further to describe the experiments he conducted to recreate and experience first-hand the daily life, culture and mostly, the food of each time period. Kean deserves a medal of some sort for some of those experiments *still shuddering*

Although I prefer the format of the other books I’ve read, I enjoyed this one and look forward to my next Sam Kean read.