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Welcome to City Lights Bookstore!
A Literary Meeting Place Since 1953, City Lights is a landmark general bookstore, internationally known for its expert selection of books and for its commitment to free intellectual inquiry. Here you can check out our events calendar, browse a selection of featured books, new releases and recommended titles from the City Lights staff, sign up to receive City Lights newsletters, and learn a bit of the history of City Lights. |
Featured Titles at the City Lights Bookstore
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The Beautiful Struggle A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood An exceptional father-son story about the reality that tests us, the myths that sustain us, and the love that saves us. Paul Coates was an enigmatic god to his sons: a Vietnam vet who rolled with the Black Panthers, an old-school disciplinarian and...
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Writers Under Siege Voices of Freedom from Around the World "An invaluable anthology. . . . The individuals in this anthology . . . tell stories so vital and impassioned that we are moved to become lecteurs engagés, moved not merely by their writing but by their...
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A Blue Hand The Beats in India A literary exploration of the Beats' encounter with India in the 1960s, a journey that inspired and influenced generations of Americans and Indians alike In 1961, Allen Ginsberg left New York by boat for Bombay, India. He brought with him his...
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Wordless Books The Original Graphic Novels “Wordless books” were stories from the early part of the twentieth century told in black and white woodcuts, imaginatively authored without any text. Although woodcut novels have their roots spreading back through the history of graphic arts...
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Comfortably Numb How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation Public perceptions of mental health issues have changed dramatically over the last fifteen years, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the rampant overmedication of ordinary Americans. In 2006, 227 million antidepressant prescriptions were...
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Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy On Being an American Citizen Susan Griffin, winner of a MacArthur grant and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, is widely recognized as one of the most important feminist thinkers of our day. Griffin has been broadly praised for her erudition and depth...
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The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice First Journals and Poems: 1937-1952 Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) kept a journal his entire life, beginning at the age of eleven. In these first journals the most important and formative years of the poet’s storied life are captured, his inner thoughts detailed in what the San Francisco...
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Sunlight Here I Am Interviews and Encounters, 1963-1993 Thirty-four interviews and encounters chronicle the rise of Charles Bukowski. He speaks in his own voice about his writing and his life, dutifully answering question after question. Included is his first interview in 1963 with the Literary Times of...
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Slavery by Another Name The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II In this groundbreaking historical exposé, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history—an “Age of Neoslavery” that thrived from the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II. Under laws...
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The Architecture of Happiness The Achitecture of Happiness is a dazzling and generously illustrated journey through the philosophy and psychology of architecture and the indelible connection between our identities and our locations. One of the great but often unmentioned causes of...
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In Defense of Lost Causes A witty, adrenalin-fuelled manifesto for universal values by the maverick philosopher. Is global emancipation a lost cause? Are universal values outdated relics of an earlier age? In the postmodern world, ideologies of all kinds have been cast in...
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