June 2026

Signed with Kickstarter.

One of the great milestones in June was signing with Kickstarter as our exclusive partner for the pre-order campaign.

To pre-order your copy of Table of Gods, you’ll need a Kickstarter account.

1.⁠ ⁠Go to tableofgods.com/kickstarter

2.⁠ ⁠Click the “Notify me on launch” button

3.⁠ ⁠If you don’t have a Kickstarter account, click "Sign up" at the top of the page and create an account

On August 22, you’ll finally be able to pre-order Table of Gods.

The cover is set in clay

One of the most challenging parts of producing Table of Gods has been the cover. For years, I’ve obsessed over making the cover resemble a clay tablet. The cover above is an artist’s rendering of my vision. Creating a rendering is easy. Making the cover look like the rendering is hard.

Many printers have turned me down, saying it’s impossible to achieve the cuneiform effect because we’re dealing with paper, not clay. Fair enough.

Bad at taking no for an answer, I went to the paper mills instead. I visited several in Italy and talked to more around the globe. I spoke in detail with paper engineers about my vision, which must have sounded like, “I want to have my cake and eat it too, please.”

After reviewing thousands of paper samples (that’s not an exaggeration) and learning more about paper than I thought possible, we developed a special paper in a lab over eight months. The paper looks and feels like clay while being stain-resistant and more durable than standard cover paper.

Together with 3D artists, we created a brass die with cuneiform signs from the tablet containing the world’s oldest recipes. The die is used to deboss (press down) the board and cover paper. After creating more dies than I can remember, we finally nailed it.

I couldn’t be happier with the result and want to thank my childhood friend, Babel Poli, for his contribution to making this possible.

Creating the bibliography

One reason Table of Gods took seven years to complete is that I’ve been rigorous in my research. With hundreds of sources spread across eleven chapters in the book, I had a slight panic attack thinking about how to organize everything into the bibliography along with my comments.

So I consulted Dr. Andrew Deloucas, who has a PhD in Assyriology from Harvard. Dr. Deloucas is organizing the bibliography in Table of Gods (currently 340 sources) while doing a final fact-check on the manuscript. 

He’s also helping me with the “How to speak Sumerian” and “How to write your name in cuneiform” sections, among many other things.

We aim to finish everything in the next seven days, after which I’ll send the manuscript to a copy editor for a final check of consistency and adherence to the Chicago Manual of Style, then to a proofreader, and finally to the printer.

Not sure if I’m scared or excited about it. Probably both :)

Creating the bibliography

I’ve been transparent about the process behind Table of Gods since I started writing these updates in November 2022. But there are two things I’ve kept secret. 

These secrets will blow your mind. I’m not saying this to create an artificial cliffhanger. Both secrets are extraordinary and, as far as I know, have never been done before.

I will reveal the secrets live on stage (see below) on August 22. The event goes live at 8 PM CEST, 2 PM EDT, 11 AM PDT. Add it to your calendar now to make sure you don’t miss it or click this link and the “Notify me” button on YouTube.

The venue for the Table of Gods book launch.