Booking through Thursday: Thanks!

Booking through Thursday wants to know:  What authors and books are you most thankful for?

• Beverly Cleary, Gertrude Chandler-Warner, and R.L. Stine, for so many hours of childhood entertainment...
• Melinda Metz, Anne M. Martin, K. A. Applegate, and S.D. Perry for the same during middle- and high school.
• J.K. Rowling, Robert Harris,  and  Steven Saylor for the same in recent years. 
• John Grisham, for souring me on the 'rat race'.
• Robert Green Ingersoll, for being such an implacable and ferocious fighter for free thought, liberty, and human creativity. His lectures and oratory lit a fire under me. 
• Carl Sagan, for igniting my curiosity and turning it into awe at the natural world.
• Eugenie Scott, for freeing me from dogma. 
• Doug Muder, for introducing me to Stoicism.
• Isaac Asimov, for all his humor, charm, love of humanity, wonderful stories, and ability to see every human endeavor as part of a vast, beautiful tapestry.
• Marcus Aurelius,  for getting me through some tough times and allowing me to see what it is like to live with deliberation. 
• Neil Postman, for cautioning me against being addicted to entertainment.
• Walter J. Boyne, whose The Influence of Air Power Upon History has been the starting point for many a term paper. 
• Howard Zinn, for introducing me to the role that direct action has had in political history, and allowing me to see that even if every election is bought, there's still hope for democracy as long as the people themselves are willing to act. 
• Frances and Joseph Gies, for changing the way I view the medieval era...and Ray Spangenburg and Diane Kit Moser for opening me up to the history of science.

Well, I could go on.