Read. You'll be glad you did.
Author
Selected Works (Works I Selected)
Laxness
 Halldór Laxness Choices: Independent People; The Fish Can Sing; The Atom Station; Paradise Reclaimed; Under the Glacier; The Bread of Life. Comments: Wry, insightful, utterly Icelandic. Start with Independent People, and learn about coffee and sheep from a Nobel Prize winner.
Petroski
 Henry Petroski Choices: The Pencil; The Evolution of Useful Things; The Book on the Bookshelf; Paperboy; Engineers of Dreams; Invention by Design. Comments: Not your everyday engineer; every page can teach you something. I started with The Pencil but also highly recommend The Book on the Bookshelf. Who knew.
Wills
 Garry Wills Choices: Lincoln at Gettysburg; Certain Trumpets; Saint Augustine; Inventing America; Cincinnatus; Under God; Explaining America. Comments: Just a fraction of the oeuvre. Certain Trumpets is brilliant, Under God timely and provocative.
Proulx
 E. Annie Proulx Choices: The Shipping News; Close Range; Accordion Crimes. Comments: The Shipping News won the Tribune's Heartland Award, far more of a compliment than having a movie made out of it. And it's about a newspaper guy!
Kinsella
 W.P. Kinsella Choices: Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa; The Thrill of the Grass; The Moccasin Telegraph; Dance Me Outside. Comments: You know all about the baseball books, which is where I started, too; but the Native Canadian stories are equally memorable, imbued as they are with sheer hilarity and keen observation. I've read 17 of his books and look for obscure Canadian imprints and reprints constantly on the Web.
Smiley
 Jane Smiley Choices: A Thousand Acres; The Greenlanders; Moo. Comments: Depending on your mood, you can laugh with Moo; marvel at the scope of The Greenlanders; or . . . get thoroughly bummed out by A Thousand Acres, so disturbing and powerful that I had to finish it.
Kidder
 Tracy Kidder Choices: Among Schoolchildren; House; Home Town; Old Friends; The Soul of a New Machine. Comments: Among Schoolchildren edges out House as the one to start with, despite the rep of New Machine.
Menand
 Louis Menand Choice: The Metaphysical Club. Comments: Another Heartland Award winner that turned out to be a Pulitzer Prize winner. The first book on which I had to take notes while reading in years, and well worth the effort; how did he ever figure out how to weave these strands together?
Telander
 Rick Telander Choice: Heaven Is a Playground. Comments: I don't care if he works for the Sun-Times, still the best sports book I ever read. The dust jacket of my 1976 hardcover is pretty darn dog-eared.
William Cronon Choice: Nature's Metropolis. Comments: This history of Chicago in the 19th Century is replete with memorable word-pictures and compelling historical detail....all ye ever need know about coal, the Board of Trade, and all manner of other economic change that led to complete social change.