Welcome to City Lights Books
of San Francisco

City Lights is a landmark independent bookstore and publisher that specializes in world literature, the arts, and progressive politics.

Founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin, City Lights is one of the few truly great independent bookstores in the United States, a place where booklovers from across the country and around the world come to browse, read, and just soak in the ambiance of alternative culture's only "Literary Landmark."... Read more>>

New at City Lights Bookstore

A Coney Island of the Mind 50th Anniversary Edition (with CD) Lawrence Ferlinghetti A million copies in print—translated into over a dozen languages—one of the best-selling and most popular books of poetry ever published, now available in a new hardcover edition containing a CD of the author reading his work. Ferlinghetti is a...

The Political Mind Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain George Lakoff In What’s the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank pointed out that a great number of Americans actually vote against their own interests. In The Political Mind, George Lakoff explains why. As it turns out, human beings are not the rational creatures...

Telex from Cuba A Novel Rachel Kushner Rachel Kushner has written an astonishingly wise, ambitious, and riveting novel set in the American community in Cuba during the years leading up to Castro's revolution -- a place that was a paradise for a time and for a few. The first novel to tell...

First Stop in the New World Mexico City, the Capital of the 21st Century David Lida A panoramic literary portrait of Mexico City— a vibrant, seductive, paradoxical city now commanding the world’s attention and showing us the way to the future of urban life. David Lida moved to Mexico City fifteen years ago in search of a kind of...

New from City Lights Publishers!

Voices of the Chicago Eight A Generation on Trial Tom Hayden, Frank Condon, Ron Sossi Dramatically edited transcripts from the explosive 1969 conspiracy trial are paired with historic contextual writings to provide the essential Chicago Conspiracy handbook

Crude Reflections/Cruda Realidad Oil, Ruin and Resistance in the Amazon Rainforest Lou Dematteis, Kayana Szymczak An indigenous community's landmark legal case to hold Chevron accountable for its contamination of the Amazon

Portions From a Wine-Stained Notebook Uncollected Stories and Essays, 1944-1990 Charles Bukowski, David Calonne Essential uncollected work from one of the most infamous and provocative contemporary American writers.

Dying To Live A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid Mizue Aizeki, Joseph Nevins The real story -- and human price -- of US/Mexico border enforcement.

Shoot An Iraqi Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun Wafaa Bilal, Kari Lydersen An award-winning Iraqi artist's life story and the impact of his highly provocative interactive art piece