Dinosaurs at a Dinner Party. How Humanity Opened the Door to a Lost World

New Year's Eve, 1853. Artist Benjamin Hawkins hosts a festive banquet for 22 outstanding figures of his time. However, they will have to enjoy the treats... inside a huge model of a dinosaur. Perhaps for the first time in history, people saw dinosaurs as they truly were. Join us — welcome to a historical journey through the scientific discoveries of the 19th century in Edward Dolnick's book "Dinosaurs at a Dinner Party: How Humanity Opened the Door to a Lost World"!


In the 19th century, the world seemed to people a cozy, predictable, and quite understandable place. But everything changed when a 12-year-old boy in Massachusetts accidentally stumbled upon a chain of fossilized footprints the size of dinner plates — these were the first dinosaur tracks in history. Soon, scientists everywhere began discovering bones standing as tall as a human, which were astonishing. No one had ever imagined that giant monsters, like dragons from ancient myths and children's tales, once roamed our planet.

In this book, renowned historian Edward Dolnick invites readers on an exciting journey through the prehistoric era and the 19th century, which revealed dinosaurs to the world. This remarkable exploration details how paleontologists and amateur enthusiasts, like detectives, pieced together the chronicles of fossils, turning scattered discoveries into the story of dinosaurs that we know today.


“A vivid account of how the world tried to comprehend discoveries that fundamentally changed the perception of humanity’s place in history and life in general,” — Associated Press
“A historical adventure recounting the eccentric Victorians who discovered dinosaur bones and thus paved the way for a completely new understanding of history,” — Next Big Idea Club

• A comprehensive study of how dinosaurs were studied — from the discovery of the first fossils and the realization of their existence to the scientific history of dinosaurs that we know today.
• A glimpse into the everyday life and mentality of the scientific community of the 19th century.
• An interesting perspective on how our understanding of the world and the history of humanity changed, as well as how the developing science was attempted to be "reconciled" with theological theories.
• A captivating and easy presentation by the author: Edward Dolnick — historian, writer, journalist, former chief science columnist at The Boston Globe, author of bestsellers on the history of science and inventions.
• Unique design referring to real dinners inside dinosaur bones: a shortened cover featuring Renoir's painting "Ball at the Moulin de la Galette," from which an illustrated contrasting endpaper with a dinosaur skeleton peeks out. The matte cover is adorned with embossing and lacquer, and inside you will find numerous black-and-white illustrations.