coffee table book

Noun

coffee table book (plural coffee table books)

1. A large book, usually with lavish illustrations, typically displayed on a coffee table.
   • 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’....1976, Robert Plant Armstrong, “The Qualities of a Book, the Wants of a Dissertation”, in Eleanor Harman, Ian Montagnes, editors, The Thesis and the Book, paperbound edition, Toronto, Ont.; Buffalo...
   • The Family Book of Black America (Crown, $20), a photographic coffee table book, by Michael H. Cottman and Deborah Willis.1996 November, “Ebony Bookshelf”, in Lerone Bennett Jr., editor, Ebony, volume LII, number 1, Chicago, Ill.: Johnson Publishing Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 18B