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.
