Can't help the OP, though I know there have been quite a few books published over the years similar to what he describes. Abebooks is certainly a great source of quality reading material (and a drain on the coffers!)
Apologies for jumping on his thread, but oddly enough I was recently thinking about a "big book of aircraft" we had in my school library about 35-40 years ago. From memory it was sized somewhere between A5 and A4 and inch or two thick.
It was a sort of historic encyclopaedia of civil and military aircraft going back to the pioneer days and covered perhaps eight or a dozen types on each spread - brief paragraph of description and a nice little perspective drawing of each type.
It was published in the late 1960s and covered types right up to that time - seem to remember the Aerostar and Merlin II were included and probably the 747, not sure if the other wide bodies made it in. Love to get hold of a copy, but no idea what it was called, where published or anything else.
Ian Allan was a school governor so we had an extensive selection of his publications, but I don't think it was one of his.
If anybody has any ideas please...