Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti served in the United States Navy during World War II, seeing action at Normandy and visiting Nagasaki six weeks after the atomic bombing—an experience that cemented his lifelong pacifism. After earning a doctorate from the Sorbonne in Paris, he settled in San Francisco and co-founded City Lights Bookstore in 1953, the nation's first all-paperback bookstore.

As publisher of City Lights Books, Ferlinghetti published Allen Ginsberg's seminal poem Howl and Other Poems in 1956. Arrested on obscenity charges, he courageously stood trial in 1957 and won a landmark First Amendment victory that established legal protections for artistic freedom. His own collection, A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), sold over one million copies and remains one of the most widely read poetry books of the modern era.