HN Explorer

Ask HN: Coffee table books

53 points by tue4Iezi ↗ HN
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"

54 comments

[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] thread
foxh0und
Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible is quite a nice one.
ericwood
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...

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
lqet
How about a coffee table book about coffee tables?
peteforde
This exists, and I have it on my coffee table.
Malic
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/.
hprotagonist
“accidents in north american mountaineering”, a publication of the american alpine club.
aj_g
or 50 classic/100 favorite climbs books
hprotagonist
Freedom of the Hills is actually a great coffee table book. The material is somewhat dated for free-climbing, but it's a great book to read.
rainloft
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_
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.
hugofirth
Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe is a book of blueprint-like diagrams drawn in xkcd style explaining complex systems simply. Its great fun!
kev009
Core Memory: A Visual Survey of Vintage Computers
egypturnash
I really need to get the online store for my three-foot wide graphic novel back up. It's about a robot lady with Philip K. Dick problems, and is generally the Kind Of Sci-Fi Fiction Nerds Like.

Trust me, you need a coffee table to read it.

http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/

qmarchi
If not super related to HN, Blink and Outliers are good options to both read and have laying around :P
askafriend
Poorly Drawn Lines is a great set of comics to have on your coffee table. Check it out!
QAPereo
‘Gravitation’ by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler. It is still a tremendous resource for all of the science and math of Special and General Relativity.

A bit off topic, but I’d add the complete collections of Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side, and Bloom County.

semi-extrinsic
I recently bought Haynes' SR71 Blackbird Owner's Workshop Manual. It's a great book about a great airplane, not just a fun title.
pavlov
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.
SteveNuts
I like "Lies my Teacher Told Me"