I grew up in a small town where the local butcher raised his own beef and pork, so he knew everything there was to know about the meat he was selling.
Then when we were first married and living in Chicago, there was Fine's on Morse Ave, where you'd tell the butcher what you wanted to make and he'd tell you what cut to get and how to cook it. (There was also an excellent kosher butcher a block away.)
When we moved to Lincoln, there were two stores with good meat departments. I think their quality declined over the years. (One store burned down a few years ago, the other is still there but I almost never buy meat from them.) Recently Fareway opened a meat market in Lincoln and several of their countermen appear to know their product fairly well, so I've been buying much of my meat there, even though it's much further away. And I've been experimenting with a few cuts I hadn't previously tried.
I know there are people who love Whole Foods, but I have not been all that impressed by their meat department, either at the Whole Foods in Lincoln or the one in Pittsburgh. One of the best meat sections I've seen in decades is at McGinnis Sisters in Monroeville PA. When I was in Columbus OH a year ago, the meat, poultry and fish markets at the North Market all made me wish I lived nearby. (The poultry market had more kinds of duck than I've ever seen at one time, and I grew up in Hanover IL, the Mallard duck capital of the United States.)
The advent of boxed beef operations has meant that most stores may have a few meat cutters, but none with the expertise I was accustomed to. And if you shop in the evening or on weekends, there might not be anyone in the meat department at all, much less an expert on cuts and how to prepare them. I have been known to ask the countermen at the meat departments of the stores I frequent a question I already know the answer to, just to see how they answer it.
I have been misled by the sirloin tip cut and a few others myself, and that's why I started studying meat cuts and meat cutting. Not that I'm likely to buy my own side of beef and butcher it, or even 10-20 pound sub-primals very often, but I want to be able to recognize the cuts by their appearance rather than from the label, and know what to do with one before I buy it.
Some of the best information out there can be found by searching for 'FFA Meat Judging', those high school students need to know the major retail cuts and how to cook them. That's not the same thing as a meat cookbook, but I haven't looked at what's available to have an opinion on recent books on cooking meat. I know I still have a lot to learn, I think the average FFA meat judging competitor would run circles around me.
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