Metro Books was an American publishing imprint producing illustrated reference, popular history, and general interest titles, operating largely through the Barnes and Noble retail channel.
Its business model was built on producing attractive, competitively priced illustrated books for the bookshop table instead of the review pages, and the catalog covered history, science, nature, cookery, and popular reference in that format.
It published the illustrated edition of Stephen Weir's History's Worst Decisions and the People Who Made Them in 2009, a title that had appeared earlier as Encyclopedia Idiotica. The imprint's books were designed to be picked up and browsed, which shaped both the writing and the production.