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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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Hip Hop Family Tree 1
1970s - 1981
Ed Piskor
This is a well-documented history of the beginnings of hip hop. Beautifully drawn in Old School comic form; hilariously written and sharply dissected. Open to any page and you'll be hooked. New York City, DJs and graffiti in the late 70s? You can't beat it, because "the beat don't stop til the break of dawn!"—Recommended by Don, City Lights Books
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Dust
A Novel
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
From a breathtaking new voice, a novel about a splintered family in Kenya—a story of power and deceit, unrequited love, survival and sacrifice. Odidi Oganda, running for his life, is gunned down in the streets of Nairobi. His grief-stricken sister, Ajany, just returned from Brazil, and their father bring his body back to their crumbling home in...
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Inside a Pearl
My Years in Paris
Edmund White
When Edmund White moved to Paris in 1983, leaving New York City in the midst of the AIDS crisis, he was forty-three years old, couldn't speak French, and only knew two people in the entire city. But in middle age, he discovered the new anxieties and pleasures of mastering a new culture. When he left fifteen years later to take a teaching position..
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Pull My Daisy
The Film and Documentary Material
Robert Frank, Alfred Leslie
The seminal and rare 1958 film, on PAL & NTSC DVD, in a presentation box with two booklets: one of Jack Kerouac's story and lyrics, and one of photographs taken on the set.
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We Are Our Brains
A Neurobiography of the Brain, from the Womb to Alzheimer's
D. F. Swaab
A vivid account of what makes us human.
Based groundbreaking new research, We Are Our Brains is a sweeping biography of the human brain, from infancy to adulthood to old age. Renowned neuroscientist D. F. Swaab takes us on a guided tour of the intricate inner workings that determine our potential, our limitations, and our desires.
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An Unnecessary Woman
A Novel
Rabih Alameddine
One of the Middle East's most celebrated voices, Rabih Alameddine follows his international bestseller, The Hakawati, with an enchanting story of a book-loving, obsessive, seventy-two-year-old "unnecessary" woman. Aaliya Saleh lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced...
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Call Me Burroughs
A Life
Barry Miles
Fifty years ago, Norman Mailer asserted, "William Burroughs is the only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius." Few since have taken such literary risks, developed such individual political or spiritual ideas, or spanned such a wide range of media. Burroughs wrote novels, memoirs, technical manuals, and poetry...
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Foreign Gods, Inc.
A Novel
Okey Ndibe
Foreign Gods, Inc., tells the story of Ike, a New York-based Nigerian cab driver who sets out to steal the statue of an ancient war deity from his home village and sell it to a New York gallery. Ike's plan is fueled by desperation. Despite a degree in economics from a major American college, his strong accent has barred him from the corporate...
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Pioneer Girl
A Novel
Bich Minh Nguyen
From an award-winning author, a novel about a Vietnamese American family's ties to The Little House on the Prairie. Jobless with a PhD, Lee Lien returns home to her Chicago suburb from grad school, only to find herself contending with issues she's evaded since college. But when her brother disappears, he leaves behind an object from their...
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The Trip to Echo Spring
On Writers and Drinking
Olivia Laing
Olivia Laing took an epic road trip across the states, to various spots that were previously associated with famous alcoholic writers, in an effort to understand all the ways that booze affected them - their lives, their loved ones, and ultimately, their writing. Laing is a fantastic writer, having successfully dissected a tragic illness that is..
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New and Forthcoming from City Lights Publishers
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Nochita
Dia Felix
Just out from City Lights / Sister Spit. A poetic debut novel, formally experimental, by turns hallucinatory, darkly funny and brutally real. Nochita is tender, fierce, and unforgettable.
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Haiti Glass
Lenelle Moïse
New poetry from City Lights/Sister Spit! With rhythmic poetry and intimate prose, Haiti Glass offers an unflinching look at disaster, desire, and death-defying love.
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Stray Poems
San Francisco Poet Laureate Series No. 6
Alejandro Murguía
Just Arrived! New work from San Francisco's first Latino Poet Laureate! "In the city of poets, Murguía has become the activist voice of refugees and exiles—as so many of us are, even as natives—at the center of the Americas. Disguised by its sensuous intimacy, soothing and ennobling, his is a poetry that arms the resistance."—Dagoberto Gilb
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Ghost Tantras
Michael McClure
New from City Lights/Grey Fox! 50 years since its first publication, we present Michael McClure's signature work, Ghost Tantras, back in print. Grahhr!
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Spying on Democracy
Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance
Heidi Boghosian
"Everyone of us is under the omniscent magnifying glass of the government and corporate spies. How do we respond to this smog of surveillance? Start by reading Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance by Heidi Boghosian."—Bill Moyers
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Border Patrol Nation
Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security
Todd Miller
Coming in March: Fast-paced frontline reporting and analysis on the militaristic spread of the U.S. Border Patrol. "What Jeremy Scahill was to Blackwater, Todd Miller is to the U.S. Border Patrol!"--Tom Miller, author, On the Border
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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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Tender Buttons
The Corrected Centennial Edition
Gertrude Stein, Seth Perlow
Coming in April: We present a centennial edition of the modernist classic featuring over 100 corrections by Stein herself. The Modern Language Association's Committee on Scholarly Editions has designated it an MLA Approved Edition. Congrats to editor Seth Perlow!
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An Army of Lovers
Juliana Spahr, David Buuck
An Army of Lovers re-asks the question, what is the relationship between poetry and politics? "Fantastical, lyrical, whimsical and wildly experimental, An Army of Lovers is as serious as it is absurd." —Christopher Higgs, HTMLGIANT
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Here Come the Warm Jets
City Lights Spotlight No. 10
Alli Warren
"Warren's first book of poems is highly self-reflective, interestingly interrogative, and a lot of fun."—Booklist
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