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Ask HN: Coffee table books

53 points| tue4Iezi | 8 years ago | reply

I was wondering what coffee table books people could recommend that would be relevant to the HN community? Aside from the obvious "Designed by Apple"

51 comments

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[+] malloreon|8 years ago|reply
I consider the omplete Calvin & Hobbes collection to be the perfect coffee table book. Bust it out at a random moment and receive the sum of all human wisdom in bite sized cartoon form.
[+] pavlov|8 years ago|reply
I use C.G. Jung's "The Red Book". It's imposingly large, very red, and full of impenetrable medieval-style German handwriting and disconcerting drawings documenting Jung's dreams and visions circa World War I. There is an English translation at the end, and if people ask, it's fair to pretend that I've read it because I do skim a few pages occasionally.
[+] Malic|8 years ago|reply
The Making of Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' by Taschen. This isn't a book so much to be read is it is to be /studied/.
[+] rainloft|8 years ago|reply
The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan.

https://www.amazon.com/Medium-Massage-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/15...

He combines words and images in a style that inspired Wired magazine. The book is about the influence of technology on how and what humans communicate and think.

Your guests will be flipping the book upside-down and looking at the reversed image in a mirror at times. It's entertaining as well as informative!

[+] gt_|8 years ago|reply
While not bad (I have it) this is not Marshall Mcluhan's work. It is some other guy's. The text is ripped from Marshall Mcluhan's work of the same name which is a for more exploratory work and not fit for a 2017 coffee table.
[+] ericwood|8 years ago|reply
I have this one sitting out and it's a joy to flip through:

Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed

The beauty of Soviet brutalism: A photographic record of 90 weird and wonderful buildings from the last decades of the USSR

https://www.amazon.com/Frederic-Chaubin-Communist-Constructi...

[+] jdswain|8 years ago|reply
I think 'Revolution in the valley' could qualify, it's not really a coffee table book, but the stories are so short you can pick it up and read one in a few minutes.

There is also 'Appledesign: The Work of the Apple Industrial Design Group', it's old and out of print but it's got some really interesting prototypes in there.

As others have mentioned there is also Dieter Rams book and Core Memory.

Might I also suggest Knuth?

[+] senorsmile|8 years ago|reply
I just picked up "Reading the Past: Ancient Writing from Cuneiform to the Alphabet". It's actually a combination of 6 smaller "books" that goes over:

- Cuneiform - Egyptian Hieroglyhps - Linear B - The Early Alphabet - Green Inscriptions - Etruscan

Much of what's in the book are things I've already learned. However, it makes for a great summary for people that are over and have questions.