Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., 1922-2007.

Possibly one of the best writers to grace American literature, and he died last night at age 84. If you'd like to start somewhere, I recommend Cat's Cradle or Slaughterhouse-Five myself, but those are the answers everyone gives. A couple of wonderful quotes of his that I've always liked:

“High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.”

“The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.”