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Welcome to City Lights Books of San Francisco
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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 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>>
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New at City Lights Bookstore
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Furious Cool
Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him
David Henry, Joe Henry
In this loose and lyrical labor of love, brothers David and Joe Henry have brought Richard Pryor back to pulsating life, capturing his spirit and genius and the monumental demons that fueled him. It's billed as a biography but it's really more than that, delving deep enough to make you look at Pryor and his legacy in a whole new light.
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Roads to Berlin
Detours and Riddles in the Lands and History of Germany
Cees Nooteboom
Roads to Berlin maps the changing landscape of post-World-War-II Germany, from the period before the fall of the Berlin Wall to the present. Written and updated over the course of several decades, an eyewitness account of the pivotal events of 1989 gives way to a perceptive appreciation of its difficult passage to reunification...
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Crossing the Bay of Bengal
The Furies of Nature and the Fortune of Migrants
Sunil S. Amrith
The Indian Ocean was global long before the Atlantic, and today the countries bordering the Bay of Bengal--India, Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Malaysia--are home to one in four people on Earth. Crossing the Bay of Bengal places this region at the heart of world history for the first time. Integrating human and environmental...
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Dirty Love
Andre Dubus III
In this heartbreakingly beautiful book of disillusioned intimacy and persistent yearning, beloved and celebrated author Andre Dubus III explores the bottomless needs and stubborn weaknesses of people seeking gratification in food and sex, work and love. In these linked novellas in which characters walk out the back door of one story and into...
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Calcutta
Two Years in the City
Amit Chaudhuri
he award-winning author Amit Chaudhuri has been widely praised for the beauty and subtle power of his writing and for the ways in which he makes "place" as complex a character as his men and women. Now he brings these gifts to a spellbinding amalgam of memoir, reportage, and history in this intimate, luminous portrait of Calcutta...
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The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia
Philip Lamantia, Garrett Caples, Andrew Joron, Nancy J. Peters
Many poets have contributed to the greatness of City Lights, but few more so than North Beach's own Philip Lamantia (1927-2005). Lamantia published his earliest work in avant-garde magazines when he was 15, then at 16 went to NYC to join the war-exiled Paris surrealists. Known as the foremost American surrealist, he also...
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Book of Ages
The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin
Jill Lepore
From one of our most accomplished and widely admired historians, a revelatory portrait of Benjamin Franklin's youngest sister and a history of history itself. Like her brother, Jane Franklin was a passionate reader, a gifted writer, and an astonishingly shrewd political commentator. Unlike him, she was a mother of twelve...
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Explore Everything
Place-Hacking the City
Bradley L. Garrett
It is assumed that every inch of the world has been explored and charted; that there is nowhere new to go. But perhaps it is the everyday places around us—the cities we live in—that need to be rediscovered. What does it feel like to find the city's edge, to explore its forgotten tunnels and scale unfinished skyscrapers high above the metropolis...
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Subtle Bodies
A Novel
Norman Rush
In his long-awaited new novel, Norman Rush, author of three immensely praised books set in Africa, including the best-selling classic and National Book Award-winner Mating, returns home, giving us a sophisticated, often comical, romp through the particular joys and tribulations of marriage, and the dilemmas of friendship, as a group of college...
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Dissident Gardens
A Novel
Jonathan Lethem
A dazzling novel from one of our finest writers—an epic yet intimate family saga about three generations of all-American radicals. At the center of Jonathan Lethem's superb new novel stand two extraordinary women: Rose Zimmer, the aptly nicknamed Red Queen of Sunnyside, Queens, is an unreconstructed Communist who savages neighbors, family, and...
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The Good Lord Bird
A Novel
James McBride
Quite the masterwork. A poignant delight with a sense of humor that sears to the bone. —Recommended by Scott, City Lights Books
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New and Forthcoming from City Lights Publishers
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Ghost Tantras
Michael McClure
New from City Lights/Grey Fox! Nearly 50 years since its first publication, we present Michael McClure's signature work, "Ghost Tantras," back in print.
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Spying on Democracy
Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance
Heidi Boghosian
The government is spying on you, collecting phone records, and accessing your online activity. This is not only unacceptable, it's unconstitutional. National Lawyers Guild Executive Director Heidi Boghosian provides the back story. Available NOW.
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Yokohama Threeway
And Other Small Shames
Beth Lisick
Hot off the press! "Beth Lisick's kaleidoscopic whirlwind tour through her secret shames is the ultimate joyride for those of us who enjoy cringe-worthy embarrassment, genuine pathos, and an overdosing amount of schadenfreude."—Michael Ian Black
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Nan Dòmi
An Initiate's Journey into Haitian Vodou
Mimerose Beaubrun
Just released! The first and only insider's account of Vodou's private, mystical, interior practice, a compelling story of initiation and transformation.
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An Army of Lovers
Juliana Spahr, David Buuck
Just in! In the age of Occupy, An Army of Lovers re-asks the question, what is the relationship between poetry and politics?
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Forest of a Thousand Daemons
A Hunter's Saga
D.O. Fagunwa
Back in print! A classic work of African literature and one of the first novels to be written in any African language returns. Translated by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka.
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Here Come the Warm Jets
Alli Warren
New Spotlight Poetry! "Warren's first book of poems is highly self-reflective, interestingly interrogative, and a lot of fun."—Booklist
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The End of San Francisco
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
"Mattilda is a dazzling writer of uncommon truths, a challenging writer who refuses to conform to conventionality. Her agitation is an inspiration." -- Justin Torres, author of "We the Animals"
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Culture of Cruelty
How America's Elite Demonize the Poor, Valorize the Rich and Jeopardize the Future
Tim Wise
Forthcoming: A scalding indictment of how the wealthy influence the national economy, politics, and media to disadvantage those already less fortunate.
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Tender Buttons
The Corrected Centennial Edition
Gertrude Stein, Seth Perlow
Centennial edition of the modernist classic features over 100 corrections by Stein herself. The MLA Committee on Scholarly Editions has awarded "Tender Buttons: The Corrected Centennial Edition" its seal designating it an MLA Approved Edition.
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