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

Beats at Naropa Amassed from the riches of the Naropa University audio files, this collection offers an exciting new look at the Beats—whose influence lives on in the arts and politics of our time. In this often spontaneous, in-their-own-words oral history of...

Manatee/Humanity Anne Waldman A fascinating new work from an internationally renowned poet Anne Waldman's new investigative hybrid-poem explores the nuances of inter-species communication and compassion. It draws on animal lore, animal encounters (with grey wolf and manatee)...

B Is for Beer Tom Robbins A Children's Book About Beer? Yes, believe it or not—but B Is for Beer is also a book for adults, and bear in mind that it's the work of maverick bestselling novelist Tom Robbins, internationally known for his ability to both seriously illuminate...

New from City Lights Publishers!

The Peep Diaries How We're Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors Hal Niedzviecki One man's journey through a rapidly transforming culture of lying, spying, revealing, and confessing

Smash the Church, Smash the State! The Early Years of Gay Liberation Tommi Avicolli Mecca From the first high heel thrown at Stonewall to the last performance of the drag burlesque group the Cockettes, enter the wild days of the late '60s and early '70s with the individuals who lived them!

Who's to Say What's Obscene? Politics, Culture and Comedy in America Today Paul Krassner Satirical essays by a countercultural icon about the moral obscenity of contemporary politics, culture, and comedy

American Romances Essays Rebecca Brown New England Puritanism meets West Coast hedonism in an inventive remix of America's cultural history.

Life As We Show It Writing On Film Brian Pera, Masha Tupitsyn Writings about the influence of film on the cultural and individual imagination