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Art » Coffee Table Books

Browse book recommendations:

Art

  • Applied Arts & Crafts
  • Architecture
  • Art History
  • Coffee Table Books
  • Design & Illustration
  • Fashion & Style
  • Modern and Contemporary Art
  • Old Master Art
  • Photography

A coffee table book needs to be an object of beauty, but to be recommended by experts on Five Books it also needs to be informative and enlightening. Below are all the coffee table books that have been recommended on our site, from Ancient Egypt to the 21st century.

Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century's Most Photographed American by John Stauffer, Zoe Trodd and Celeste-Marie Bernier
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Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century's Most Photographed American

by John Stauffer, Zoe Trodd and Celeste-Marie Bernier

This book is about Frederick Douglass’s love affair with photography, which he was fascinated by. It contains all 160 photographic portraits of Frederick Douglass—from the first in around 1841 to the last in 1895—as well as his four essays on photography.

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The Library: A World History by James Campbell & Will Pryce (photographer)
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The Library: A World History

by James Campbell & Will Pryce (photographer)

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“James is an architectural historian and this is a book he wrote with photographer Will Pryce, a wonderful photographer…he real strength of his book is in the section on the great European libraries of the 18th and 19th centuries. So it includes institutions I’ve been to like the Strahov Library in Prague, the Mafra in Portugal, the Admont Abbey Library, the Abbey Library of Saint Gall in Switzerland. These are extraordinary Baroque and Rococo creations, which look inside like wedding cakes. They’re absolutely amazing. I think this period is his specialty as an architectural historian, and he writes about them with great passion and interest and depth. I often use it as a way into library history, as a first port of call.” Read more...

The best books on Libraries

Richard Ovenden, Librarian

Silk Roads: Peoples, Cultures, Landscapes by Susan Whitfield
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Silk Roads: Peoples, Cultures, Landscapes

by Susan Whitfield

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“This is a humongous book filled with beautiful photographs. Some are large enough to spread over two pages, showing famous Silk Road sites and works of art. It’s really a visual treasure. Among all these books, this is the coffee table book. It also has the most expansive definition of the Silk Road. It includes Africa, Europe and Asia. There are fabulous maps throughout the book.” Read more...

The best books on The Silk Road

Valerie Hansen, Historian

Plankton: Wonders of the Drifting World by Christian Sardet
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Plankton: Wonders of the Drifting World

by Christian Sardet

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“Several years ago, Christian became interested in plankton, because of the so-called ‘Tara’ expedition. Tara is a French midsized sail boat that went around the world sampling organisms from all over, actually following some of the same lines as Darwin’s journey in the Beagle. Christian started to image organisms during that period. It’s an incredibly beautiful book, almost a coffee table book, but it’s also a serious science book. You could take it as both. The beautiful photographs and colours are of organisms from the plankton that are photosynthetic — the phytoplankton — to zooplankton, to larvae of various animals in their planktonic phase. For those who don’t know, the word plankton is from the Greek. It’s the same root as the word ‘planet.’ It means to drift. By definition, plankton are organisms that cannot control their horizontal motion in the water.” Read more...

The best books on Microbes

Paul Falkowski, Biologist

The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss by Claire Nouvian
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The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss

by Claire Nouvian

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“After the massive, wordy tomes I’ve just mentioned it may come as a relief to turn to what is essentially a gorgeous coffee table book. Claire Nouvian’s The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss is a large format, full colour bestiary of the real, containing photographs of a couple of hundred among the countless astonishing creatures that live beneath the shallow sunlit layer at the top of the world ocean.” Read more...

The Best Books for Growing up in the Anthropocene

Caspar Henderson, Journalist

Egyptian Art in the Age of the Pyramids by Dorothea Arnold
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Egyptian Art in the Age of the Pyramids

by Dorothea Arnold

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“I wanted to choose one book that demonstrates the intensely visual nature of Ancient Egypt; this one is full of fantastically beautiful art. And it is also one of the best recent examples of a coffee-table book, if you like. But it is a coffee-table book with some outstanding scholarship as well. Ancient Egypt is one of those subjects that lends itself to large-format books, and has done so for the last 200 years. This is one of the best. It has fantastic illustrations of sculpture, paintings, architecture and jewellery from the first great flowering of Ancient Egypt in the pyramid age. If you are going to have one book that really brings you face to face with some of the most glorious products of Ancient Egyptian civilisation, this is it.” Read more...

The best books on Ancient Egypt

Toby Wilkinson, Historian

Plant by Janet Marinelli
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Plant

by Janet Marinelli

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“This is a coffee table book but it’s a very, very good coffee table book. It’s produced by Kew Gardens and it’s just got fabulous pictures, full-page spreads of plants and pretty much everything you might want to know about plants in general. There’s a section called ‘The world of plants’ about their evolution and what they do for us, a section on weeds, and if you love plants this is a fun book to read. It’s quite dense. It’s not a children’s book by any means and it deals with conservation and global warming and it’s full of pictures and it’s very nice! Plants with bulbs, climbing plants, bamboos. Everything.” Read more...

The best books on Plants

Jonathan Silvertown, Biologist

Les Decorateurs des Annees 40 by Bruno Foucart and Jean-Louis Gaillemin
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Les Decorateurs des Annees 40

by Bruno Foucart and Jean-Louis Gaillemin

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“I love 20th-century design from Art Deco to post-war French and this is a key interior design text, a furniture reference book – Les Decorateurs des Annees 40. It’s genius. It covers all those designers in France who have influenced every modern decorator; these designers who have given incredible stimulus to design. You will recognise the pieces, like the iron work of Gilbert Poillerat – just wonderful. It goes from the neoclassical and art deco to more contemporary lines. You get a lot of bang for your buck here. It is a great coffee table book or reference book or gift. If you’re a real nerd like me it’s got a fantastic bibliography and you can go on to study the work of other wonderful designers.” Read more...

The best books on Interior Design

Guy Oliver, Miscellaneou

Harry Potter: A History of Magic by British Library
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Harry Potter: A History of Magic

by British Library

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“Harry Potter: A History of Magic is also an exhibition catalogue and a fascinating coffee table book, available both in hardcover and paperback. The British Library exhibition, which marked the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter, encouraged visitors to think about the magical traditions that underpin the Harry Potter world.” Read more...

The Best Illustrated Harry Potter Books

Our Children's Editor,

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We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week.

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