Speaking for myself, I'd read Hoagland if only because (a) he has the finest sense of paragraph structure of any writer alive, and (b) he's an old friend. But since these aren't exactly qualities likely to endear his work to a wider audience, it's fortunate other things are going on as well. As a stylist, he's gifted at rescuing moribund adjectives and nursing them back to health, at combining the arcane with the colloquial, at guiding us through bewildering but suddenly gratifying digressions (like detours that turn out to save hours), and especially at jolting one's mind with abrupt, revelatory transitions….

As a reporter … he also rescues, combines, guides, and jolts, dealing with places and subjects we know little and care less about, and revealing that the universe can be glimpsed in a turtle or a tugboat as well as in a grain of sand.

Hoagland began his...