Nonbooks are of several kinds; but their differences notwithstanding, they all share two common features: they tend to be written for market rather than for intellectual reasons, and they are all means rather than ends. … Of all nonbooks, the most conspicuous example is the ‘coffee-table book’. The latter usually find their market by virtue of their decorative assets rather than from any literary or intellectual merit, or for that matter – since such works are often art books – by significantly serving important aesthetic or historical purposes.

The Family Book of Black America (Crown, $20), a photographic coffee table book, by Michael H. Cottman and Deborah Willis.

I am leery of coffee table books. They are often pretty but have little substance once you get under the surface.

Mukulika Banerjee and Daniel Miller serenade the garment [the sari] in their remarkable coffee-table book The Sari. … Photographs build the warp and weft of coffee-table books. Words seldom rule and even if written by well-known writers, they have to take second place to the camera's five-colour dominance.

Coffee table book

Meaning

Noun

Synonyms