For decades, Stanley Crouch has cut a singular path through American culture. Once an aspiring jazz musician and later a noted cultural critic, he was friends with Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray, and later an intellectual mentor to Wynton Marsalis. For all of his intellectual virtuosity, we were still surprised to discover the book that Crouch wanted to recommend: Alejo Carpentier’s “Reasons of State.”

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Reasons of State

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Interview: Stanley Crouch on 'The Artificial White Man: Essays on Authenticity'

When he’s not drawing, Chris Ware likes to read and look at vintage comics. He highly recommends a book that defies even his powers of description — a folio-sized reproduction of some of America’s first newspaper cartoons, made long before super-heroes and adventure stories took over the medium. Back then, he says, the medium could be anything — and was.

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Society is Nix: Gleeful Anarchy of the Dawn of the American Comic Strip 1895-1915

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Interview: Chris Ware on his graphic novel 'Building Stories'

Cheryl Strayed’s "Wild" is one of the most famous wilderness memoirs of our time. She especially appreciates writers who combine honesty with emotional intensity — writers who reveal themselves unflinchingly on the page. She recommends a memoir by the writer Poe Ballantine.

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Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere: A Memoir

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Interview: Cheryl Strayed on Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail

The Turkish writer and Nobel laureate says his favorite novel — the 800-plus-page Russian novel bursting with characters living the life of imperial Russian society — is a complex miracle of a book.

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Anna Karenina

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Interview: Orhan Pamul on 'Snow'—Sonic Sidebar: Orhan Pamuk on The Arabian Nights—Interview: Orhan Pamuk on Fundamentalist Islam—Interview: Why Write? Nobel Prize-Winner Orhan Pamuk Offers His Take—Interview: Istanbul with Orhan Pamuk

The author of "Another Brooklyn" recommends a James Baldwin novel she says belongs on everyone's bookshelf.

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Interview: Four Girls Growing Up In 'Another Brooklyn'

Famed novelist Kazuo Ishiguro recommends “Prayers for the Stolen,” by Jennifer Clement —a harrowing tale about young children who are abducted in the midst of Mexican drug wars.

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Interview: Kazuo Ishiguro on 'Never Let Me Go'—Interview: Kazuo Ishiguro on 'The Buried Giant'

For her own book, author Ruth Ozeki drew from “Kamikaze Diaries,” a collection of writings left behind by the young soldiers who died on suicide missions. They represent a generation of brilliant, highly educated young students who were conscripted into the army and ordered not just to kill but to die.

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Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers

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Interview: A Diary Becomes A Time Capsule

Author Petina Gappah recommends a book she explains is “The most African of Jane Austen’s novels.” Her reason why is a look at women in African today told through the eyes of two novelists: a Zimbabwean in 2020 and English woman in 1818.

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Persuasion

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Interview: The Empire Writes Back: Author Discusses Explorer David Livingstone's Complicated Legacy

Given the hyper-realism of author Karl Ove Knausgaard’s "My Struggle," you might be surprised to hear that the formative books of his childhood were filled with magic and imaginary worlds. He says Ursula K. Le Guin’s "Earthsea" fantasy series shaped him as an early reader.

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Book: The Earthsea Trilogy

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Bookmark: Karl Ove Knausgaard on 'The Flame Alphabet'—Interview: Opening A World — an interview with Karl Ove Knausgaard—Interview: 'This Novel Has Hurt Everyone Around Me': A Frank Conversation with Karl Ove Knausgaard

Because he’s fascinated by the process of collecting and by the impulse to document everyday life,

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“Gene Smith’s Sink: A Wide Angle View”

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Interview: 365 Days Of Delight: A Poet's Guide To Finding Joy