Alan Watts is great - but he's no philosopher. He even claims this himself.
He is more aligned with religion than anything else - maybe best described as a spiritualist. He wasn't exactly going about his work with the same rigor, for example, as St. Aquinas and Anselm.

Though Albert Camus claimed not to be a philosopher as well - but that is the funny thing about continental philosophy - half the time you can't distinguish them from plain authors. :-)

As for recommendations - this is really tough.

Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy would be a good one to read - but maybe not for general purposes.
For epistemology, you can't beat Gettier's Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?. It's more like a one page read, however.

Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is great for the section on the problems of induction.

For general purpose though (and I have to give credit to my SO, who has a PhD in philosophy and has taught it for ages), I think Simon Blackburn's Think might be one of the better surveys and general introductions to philosophy.

Hope this helps. :-)

For Belgium and the Congo both, I would instead recommend King Leopold's Ghost.

The book "explores the exploitation of the Congo Free State by King Leopold II of Belgium between 1885 and 1908, as well as the large-scale atrocities committed during that period. The book succeeded in increasing public awareness of these Belgian colonial crimes." (Wikipedia)

I don't think that's the book their ambassador would want us to read, though.

What a great list. I would also add On a Farther Shore about Rachel carson but she's more of a personal hero, so I'm obviously quite biased.

I took a course on Ralph Ellison and I highly recommend all of his work, even the incomplete Juneteenth. My professor for this course also wrote http://www.amazon.com/Wrestling-Left-Making-Ellison-Invisible/dp/0822348292/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323027498&sr=8-1 . Further reading if it interests you.

One of the best books I've ever read. This guy died a couple years ago here in LA.

His dad was an African businessman who worked with the Germany government and they lived in Germany. The whole story is about a black kid growing up in Nazi Germany and being in Hitler Youth. Check out this photo.

Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi ... - Amazon

How One Boy Grew Up Black In Nazi Germany — And Survived

The Changeling, by Victor LaValle

Kingdom Cons, by Yuri Herrera

Since I Laid My Burden Down, by Brontez Purnell

The Sarah Book, by Scott McClanahan

Like a Fading Shadow, by Antonio Muñoz Molina

In a Lonely Place, by Dorothy B. Hughes

The Book of Disquiet, by Fernando Pessoa