I consider the omplete Calvin & Hobbes collection to be the perfect coffee table book. Bust it out at a random moment and receive the sum of all human wisdom in bite sized cartoon form.
I use C.G. Jung's "The Red Book". It's imposingly large, very red, and full of impenetrable medieval-style German handwriting and disconcerting drawings documenting Jung's dreams and visions circa World War I. There is an English translation at the end, and if people ask, it's fair to pretend that I've read it because I do skim a few pages occasionally.
He combines words and images in a style that inspired Wired magazine. The book is about the influence of technology on how and what humans communicate and think.
Your guests will be flipping the book upside-down and looking at the reversed image in a mirror at times. It's entertaining as well as informative!
While not bad (I have it) this is not Marshall Mcluhan's work. It is some other guy's. The text is ripped from Marshall Mcluhan's work of the same name which is a for more exploratory work and not fit for a 2017 coffee table.
I think 'Revolution in the valley' could qualify, it's not really a coffee table book, but the stories are so short you can pick it up and read one in a few minutes.
There is also 'Appledesign: The Work of the Apple Industrial Design Group', it's old and out of print but it's got some really interesting prototypes in there.
As others have mentioned there is also Dieter Rams book and Core Memory.
My favourite is by the illustrator Mr Bingo - it is called Hate Mail, and it features illustrations and hand-drawn typography on real postcards that were sent to real people - features lots of swearing NSFW
I really need to get the online store for my three-foot wide graphic novel back up. It's about a robot lady with Philip K. Dick problems, and is generally the Kind Of Sci-Fi Fiction Nerds Like.
I like to leave copies of Mein Kampf lying next to copies of Das Kapital, just to keep my guests alert and on their toes. Also I've found it tends to lead to a general decrease in the amount of time it takes for someone to be labelled as Hitler during discussions.
https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Display-Quantitative-Informati...