More than decorative objects, the finest coffee table books have a way of transporting us elsewhere. Whether documenting remarkable architecture, extraordinary journeys, iconic photography or culinary craftsmanship, they invite moments of discovery while bringing character to the spaces they inhabit. These are the titles currently commanding our attention.
Travel
Londolozi: The Safari That Changed Everything
by Assouline
The Varty family’s legendary Londolozi reserve in South Africa’s Sabi Sand has shaped the global understanding of responsible, luxury wildlife conservation. This visually spectacular Assouline volume chronicles the reserve’s extraordinary story, from early cattle farm to the most celebrated safari destination on the continent, through decades of extraordinary wildlife photography, personal memoir and a philosophy of treading lightly that changed what a safari could mean.
Explore: The Leading
Hotels of the World
by Spencer Bailey
A meticulously curated love letter to the world’s most extraordinary hotels, compiled by cultural writer and editor Spencer Bailey with the authority of someone who understands what makes a great hotel. From storied European grand dames to discreet island retreats, each property is rendered in sumptuous photography alongside essays that illuminate the particular genius of place. An endlessly satisfying volume for those who consider a hotel room a destination in itself.
Slim Aarons: The Essential
by Getty Images/ Abrams
Few photographers have so completely captured a particular stratum of pleasure-seeking humanity as Slim Aarons, whose poolside images of the idle privileged remain the defining visual record of mid-century leisure. This essential collection gathers his most iconic images, Acapulco cliffs, Palm Springs pools, Italian terraces, in one gloriously oversized volume. Beautiful, knowing and faintly melancholy in the way only images of pure happiness can be.
Interiors & Architecture
Cape to Bluff, Vol. 2
by Simon Devitt, Andrea Stevens, Luke Scott and Sarah Gladwell
The second volume in Simon Devitt’s celebrated residential architecture series returns in 2026, gathering thirty exceptional New Zealand homes that respond to the land they sit on, from alpine to coast, rural to city. Devitt’s photography, paired with Andrea Stevens’ considered writing and the design hands of Luke Scott and Sarah Gladwell, makes for a slow walk through Aotearoa rather than a glossy parade. Each house is allowed to belong to its place, its weather, its people. A handsome 368-page hardcover that treats architecture as something rooted rather than staged. Essential for anyone interested in how New Zealanders shape, and are shaped by, the landscapes they live in.
BIG Atlas
by Phaidon
Bjarke Ingels Group’s extraordinary monograph arrives in atlas form, an appropriately grand format for a studio whose ambitions have reshaped skylines from Copenhagen to New York and beyond. BIG Atlas maps more than two decades of built and unbuilt projects, tracing the studio’s restless intelligence and its conviction that architecture can be both rigorously functional and genuinely joyful. Indispensable for those who follow contemporary architecture with serious attention.
Norman Foster: Works
by Taschen
Few architects of the last half-century have shaped the built world as profoundly as Norman Foster, and this monumental Taschen volume does his practice proper justice. Spanning six decades of work across the Willis Faber building, the Millau Viaduct, the Reichstag and Hearst Tower, Works assembles the definitive visual and intellectual record of a career defined by the belief that great design can transform how people live, work and move through the world.
Gastronomy
The Butter Book
by Anna Stockwell
A deceptively modest title concealing something genuinely encyclopaedic: a deep, richly researched investigation into one of the world’s most elemental and pleasurable ingredients. From cultured European butters to clarified ghee and the geography of great dairy, The Butter Book is the kind of book that changes how you shop and cook. Beautiful food photography, serious recipe-writing and a level of obsessive attention that makes it a natural companion for anyone who cooks with genuine curiosity.
Art & Design
Feadship
by Assouline
For more than seventy years, the Dutch yards of Feadship have produced the world’s most exquisitely engineered superyachts: vessels where naval architecture, craftsmanship and technology converge at a level available to almost no one and fascinating to everyone. This handsome Assouline volume chronicles the company’s remarkable history through archival and contemporary photography, tracing a lineage of custom-built masterpieces that represent the absolute pinnacle of life on the water.
Rainbow Dreams: Colour and Light in Contemporary Art
by Monacelli
A beautifully produced survey of contemporary artists working at the intersection of colour theory, light and optical experience, Rainbow Dreams traces the influence of the Light and Space movement through to the luminous installations and paintings that characterise so much vital art being made today. Artists including James Turrell, Olafur Elíasson and a new generation of colour-obsessed practitioners are gathered in a volume as visually arresting as the work it documents.
Basquiat: The World of Jean-Michel
by Assouline
Assouline’s latest Ultimate edition, Basquiat: The World of Jean-Michel, is less a book than an object of desire. Housed in a canvas clamshell that nods to the artist’s own raw materiality, it gathers 200-plus works alongside reflections from Lenny Kravitz, George Condo, Peter Brant and the late bell hooks. Six thematic chapters trace Basquiat’s crowns, heads and downtown mythology, a fitting tribute to an icon whose legacy refuses to fade.
Pop Culture
Sophia by Eisenstaedt
by Taschen
Alfred Eisenstaedt’s intimate photographic study of Sophia Loren stands as one of the great unsung achievements in celebrity portraiture, a body of images that captures the actress not as icon but as a person of remarkable intelligence, warmth and physical presence. Drawn from sessions spanning decades, the photographs reveal a rapport between subject and photographer that produces images of startling ease and authenticity. A book for anyone who finds the relationship between camera and subject genuinely fascinating.
Nike Football Boots
by Phaidon
A forensic and visually spectacular survey of five decades of Nike football footwear, tracing the design evolution, material innovation and cultural influence of boots worn from World Cup finals to training pitches worldwide. Phaidon brings its characteristic rigour to an object most people have worn without really seeing, revealing a design history as compelling as any in fashion or industrial design. Essential reading for those who understand that sports equipment at its best is design at its most demanding.
Fashion & Lifestyle
Chic Cats
by Assouline
Assouline turns its attention to the cat, specifically the cat as cultural object, muse and impeccable aesthetic foil. Chic Cats gathers images of felines in the company of artists, designers, editors and style figures across the twentieth century, revealing just how persistently the cat has occupied the elegant interior and the creative life. Knowing, beautiful and considerably more intelligent than it first appears. Much like its subject matter.
Jenny Sais Quoi: Adventures in Vintage & Personal Style
by Jenny Walton
Street style photographer turned subject, Jenny Walton brings her richly layered visual sensibility to a book about the pleasures of dressing with intention and historical awareness. Adventures in Vintage & Personal Style is part wardrobe memoir, part love letter to the charity shop and auction house, part argument for wearing what you love rather than what you’re told. Warm, funny and genuinely useful. The rare style book that reads as an invitation rather than a prescription.
