Over at the day job I have an Editor's Note about my nominee for the title. E.B. White is remembered today as the author of Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little, as an important editor in the founding of the New Yorker, and as a teacher who has instructed generations of writers on how to craft better sentences through the book he co-authored with William Strunk, The Elements of Style.
In my mind, however, he will always be the touchstone I use to write about my home state. No author, before or sense, has captured Maine's landscape and people, but most of all it's culture, with the same precision. White had a gimlet eye.