Our pick of this year’s best coffee-table books covers everything and anything from art and design to music, photography, and cooking. We travel back to the streets of 1970s New York—downtown, where Debbie Harry’s pop-punk band Blondie first performed their hit song “Heart of Glass” at the Palladium, and uptown, where teenagers in Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Black neighborhoods were shaping the urban music scene. We go across the pond, too, where Paul McCartney reflects on the Beatles’ breakup as well as the creative rebirth that followed with Wings.
We journey to an Art Deco Palm Springs and to Italy’s Florentine palazzos, then get an inside look at London’s famed private members’ clubs. Japanese love hotels receive a spotlight, as do tennis courts around the world. (“Dear Tennis,” says Naomi Osaka, “I love you, I love you not, I love you.”) Other winning subjects in the design category include the Italian magazine FMR, the architect Gio Ponti, the Swiss company Vitra, and the Swedish store Svenskt Tenn.
Some books feature photographs from the greats: Arnold Newman, Bruce Davidson, Dafydd Jones, Douglas Kirkland, Elliott Erwitt, Larry Fink, Lee Friedlander, Lisette Model, Mick Rock, Stephen Shames, and Todd Webb. And others feature photographs of the greats: Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, and Jean Seberg. Plus, some drawings on the mythological Mitford sisters.
We visit studios belonging to Niki de Saint Phalle and Robert Rauschenberg, and then head to the kitchens of Ruthie Rogers and Lee Miller, whose creativity found yet another outlet in cooking.
Settling on a favorite is never easy when the books are this good, so we’ve agreed on a tie: From Ted to Tom, a rare collection of illustrated letters by Edward Gorey, and Weegee, featuring the Ukrainian photographer’s tabloid shots and portraits of Hollywood stars. —Jeanne Malle
Jeanne Malle is an Associate Editor at AIR MAIL
