Don't leave home without reading No Man's Land, The Shipyard or A Brief Life by Juan Carlos Onetti, or anything from the pen of Mario Benedetti, two of Uruguay's best known contemporary writers. Much the same could be said of Ariel by José Enrique Rodó, a turn-of-the-century essay contrasting North American and Latin American civilization that has been hailed as a classic.For a discussion of the rise of the country's social welfare policies, try George Pendle's Uruguay, South America's First Welfare State and Milton Vanger's The Model Country: Jose Battle y Ordóñez of Uruguay, 1907-1915.A sympathetic portrayal of the 1960s insurgency movements can be found in María Esther Gilio's The Tupamaros Guerillas, while the engrossing Costa-Gavras film State of Siege deals with the Tupamaros' kidnapping and execution of a suspected CIA agent.Political trends in contemporary Uruguay are explored in Political Parties and Redemocratization in Uruguay by Luis González and Uruguay, Democracy at the Crossroads by Martin Weinstein.