"In City Lights: Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the Biography of a Bookstore , Gioia Woods gifts her readers with a lively and wide-ranging cultural history of an institution that, over seventy years after its founding, still stands as a vital site of literary dissent in the United States and beyond. In Woods's hands, the story of City Lights reminds us that other worlds are possible." -- Alex Trimble Young , Barrett Honors College, Arizona State University "City Lights is arguably the first work of its kind to present a comprehensive history of City Lights Bookstore and its press as a cultural institution. Not only that, but its international scope will appeal to a more globally aware generation through its expansion of counterculture to include environmentalism and the exploration of gender and sexual identities." -- Robert Bennett , professor of English, Montana State University, author of Deconstruction Post-WWII New York City: The Literature, Art, Jazz, and Architecture of an Emerging Global Capital.