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

 

Three Days Before the Shooting . . .
Three Days Before the Shooting . . .
Ralph Ellison, Adam Bradley, John Callahan
At his death in 1994, Ralph Ellison left behind roughly two thousand pages of his unfinished second novel, which he had spent nearly four decades writing. Long awaited, it was to have been the work Ellison intended to follow his masterpiece, Invisible...

Just Kids
Just Kids
Patti Smith
It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation. Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert...

Point Omega
Point Omega
A Novel
Don DeLillo
Don Delillo has been "weirdly prophetic about twenty-first century America" (The New York Times Book Review). In his earlier novels, he has written about conspiracy theory, the Cold War and global terrorism. Now, in Point Omega, he looks into...

    

New from City Lights Publishers!

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself
A New Critical Edition by Angela Y. Davis
Frederick Douglass, Angela Y. Davis
A new edition of the African American masterpiece featuring critical essays by Angela Y. Davis

The Rising of the Ashes
The Rising of the Ashes
Tahar Ben Jelloun
Two epic poems focus on the bitter consequences of war and violence in the Middle East

Prison/Culture
Prison/Culture
Sharon E. Bliss, Kevin B. Chen, Steve Dickison, Mark Dean Johnson, Rebeka Rodriguez
Nearly fifty artists, poets, and activists examine the contemporary prison system through heartrending art and community

The Awakener
The Awakener
A Memoir of Kerouac and the Fifties
Helen Weaver
Helen Weaver's intimate memoir of love and friendship with Jack Kerouac and the Beats

Impossible Princess
Impossible Princess
Kevin Killian
Impossible Princess is a book John Rechy's or Dennis Cooper's characters would read