The Best Coffee Table Books for Men

Posted: October 25, 2018

The best coffee table books for men cover all of our favorite topics. Booze. Cars. Boobies. Star Wars. No need to complicate things, or pander to anyone else when it comes to decorating your bachelor pad...or the one room in the house where your wife lets you keep a 65" OLED TV and Sobro Cooler coffee table.

And for those of you looking for gifts for men, and rolling your eyes at my so obvious coffee table book choices, please keep in mind that we are simple beings. When it comes to publications we want to project as representative of our very nature, and also stuff might like to pick up and flip through when we're bored or high sometime, Booze. Cars. Boobies. Star Wars. Pretty much covers it. Heavy on the photos and illustrations, light on the text please.

Here are my picks for the best coffee table books for men.

Humans of New York

Brandon Stanton started his blog Humans of New York in the summer of 2010 in an effort to capture a "photographic census of New York City." The strange, the beautiful, the inspiring, the struggling. The people who say, "A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times: It is a beautiful catastrophe" (Le Corbusier), and the people who say, "Man I'd hit that so hard whoever could pull me out would become King of England" (man on street taking note of hot girl).

Two million+ online followers later, Stanton turned the beloved blog Humans of New York into a book by the same name. I'll shorten that name to HONY because that's what Stanton does when he writes about it, and also obviously because HONY looks like HORNY.

$15.66 ➠ Amazon

The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe

Jump down Theodore Gray's rabbit hole and have a look at the periodic table's 118 elements expanded into an original collection of mesmerizing photographic representations, scientific and historical facts, and stories of what beryllium and antimony were like as kids. The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe depicts what we used to commit to rote memory in junior high in their pure, uncombined forms. Gray put 7 years of effort into researching the book and gathering its photos, all of which make full-page color appearances alongside their descriptions and property data.

$25.30 ➠ Amazon

Cabin Porn

Cabin Porn: Inspiration for Your Quiet Place Somewhere by Zach Klein, Noah Kalina, and Steven Leckart feeds both the eyes and the itch to build a place to call home away from home with its compilation of the most remarkable handmade cottages and cabins spreading from the American backcountry to all curves of the world. The book also expands upon Cabin Porn's single-shot-dominant tumblr with additional interior photography and how-to advice for building your own Big Bad Wolf-proof getaway.

$23.50 ➠ Amazon

Collector's Edition Ferrari Coffee Table Book

I can't afford a new Ferrari. Aaaand, I can't afford a new Ferrari coffee table book either. Come on, Italian powerhouse founded by Enzo Ferrari in 1947! Where's the peek into the Ferrari Archives for those of your admirers who can't go from $0 to $6,000 in 3 seconds flat?

A limited edition of a fitting 1,947 copies, the Ferrari coffee table book arrives numbered and signed by Piero Ferrari. Buyers can choose from a standard Collector's Edition book or an even more exclusive, and waaaaay more expensive ($30,000 expensive) Art Edition. Both consist of a fiery red leather-bound tome with an embossed Ferrari Prancing Horse on the cover. Within the book's 500+ pages you'll find hundreds of photographs and documents spanning the car maker's history, as well as some from private collectors around the world, in an attempt "to reveal the unique story behind Ferrari's victories, its protagonists, and its legacy."

$6,000 ➠ Taschen

Stoner Coffee Table Book

Steve Mockus presents: the Stoner Coffee Table Book. For that special kind of stoner who enjoys smoking out solo, and needs an activity more interactive than staring off into space, but less mentally taxing than playing video games or following a storyline on South Park, when he's high.

The Stoner Coffee Table Book doesn't just provide a happy medium between Not Enough Stimulation and Too Bright! Too Loud! Too Much! for those in a deep state of cannabis reflection and calm, it makes the high life really, really...really interesting. For hours. Maybe days if you ate something. Through bright colors, intricate scenes, and super duper weird Photoshops, the Stoner Coffee Table Book fills your time between puffs with a crazy gallery of trippy and mind-bending images.

$14.25 ➠ Amazon

How to Live with a Huge Penis

Explore and allay your insecurities about the genetic birth defect known as Oversized Male Genitalia. Don't be shy, according to authors Dr. Richard Jacob and Rev. Owen Thomas, thousands of men are diagnosed with OMG each year.

Or just buy How to Live with a Huge Penis and set it out on your coffee table to make other people uncomfortable. And a little curious....

$11.66 ➠ Amazon

Booze & Vinyl

Rock out with your cocktail out! Booze and Vinyl: A Spirited Guide to Great Music and Mixed Drinks is part stunning coffee table book, part curated bartender's manual, and part ticket book of front row seats to nostalgic drunk dance parties in your living room.

Covering 70 records from the 1950s through the 2000s, Booze and Vinyl pairs the likes of Beck's Odelay, Snoop Doggy Dog's Doggy Style, Aretha Franklin's I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, and Guns 'n' Roses' Appetite for Destruction with album liner notes, plus 2 cocktail recipes apiece - one for the "Side A" and one for "Side B" - that complement the music's mood. GnR, for example, includes ingredients and instructions for a Kamikaze and a Rattle Skull.

$16.51 ➠ Amazon

The LEGO Architect

Art Deco, Modernism, and High-Tech according to LEGO. Lots of models to thumb through in this coffee table edition, plus instructions for building 12 LEGO masterpieces in your favorite architectural style.

$22.46 ➠ Amazon

Star Wars: The Blueprints

In the newest (2017) edition of Star Wars: The Blueprints, "the meticulously researched text gives voice to the groundbreaking and brilliant engineers, designers, and artists that have, in film after film, created the most imaginative and iconic locales." You know what that means?

I don't. I have no clue what that stuck up librarian gobbledegook means. But if it's any indication of what kinds of sentences are inside Star Wars: The Blueprints, then this is definitely another coffee table book I'm going to buy just for the pictures. Of which there area 250 blueprints, 500 photographs and illustrations, and 10 gatefolds.

$57.17 ➠ Amazon

Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds, 1953-2016

Playboy originally published a Complete Centerfolds hardcover in 2007, but in 2017 they updated the edition to add the next 10 years of voluptuous playmates, plus, er, flesh out their photographs with new narratives and a redesigned package. I guess when Hef's son decided to bring the ~~nudie~~ sexy back to current issues of the magazine, he figured this centerfolds collection would be good way to remind dudes what's always made Playboy so great.

The articles.

$50.99 ➠ Amazon

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