George Orwell is one obvious suggestion, and I think he lives up to his reputation. "Shooting an Elephant", "A Hanging" and "The Spike" come to mind right away.

George Orwell is one obvious suggestion, and I think he lives up to his reputation. "Shooting an Elephant", "A Hanging" and "The Spike" come to mind right away. Slightly less obvious, I'm a big fan of Philip Gourevitch. He's somewhere between a reporter and an essayist. A lot of his essays appeared in The New Yorker, and a group of them on Rwanda eventually became a book We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families. That is outstanding non-fiction writing.