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James Wood and John Updike are to my mind the two best literary critics at work today. Who is better? I muse on this over at my site.
This may be slightly off topic, but thought you might enjoy what Anton Chekhov had to say about critics:
Critics are like horse-flies which hinder the horses in their ploughing of the soil. The muscles of the horse are as taut as fiddle-strings, and suddenly a horse-fly alights on its croup, buzzing and stinging. The horse's skin quivers, it waves its tail. What is the fly buzzing about? It probably doesn't know itself. It simply has a restless nature and wants to make itself felt - "I'm alive, too, you know!" it seems to say. "Look, I know how to buzz, there's nothing I can't buzz about!" I've been reading reviews of my stories for twenty-five years, and can't remember a single useful point in any of them, or the slightest good advice. The only reviewer who ever made an impression on me was Skabichevsky, who prophesied that I would die drunk in the bottom of a ditch.

"An American journalist-author who is underrated compared with, say, Malcolm Gladwell..."

Gee, that narrows the field down to, oh, every American journalist-author.

I vote for Laura Miller of salon.com.

It seems critics of poetry always get left out of consideration. Dan Chiasson seems to be a rising talent in that branch, writing a few times now for The New Yorker and a few times for The New York Times. Adam Kirsch writes more frequently about fiction now (for The New York Sun and other outlets) and is quite often flat wrong (esp. about mid-century American poetry), but his writing is consistently thought-provoking, precise and dauntingly articulate.

Adam Kirsch is one of the best book critics in America, and certainly runs the most literary book section. I'm shocked that you could put Rosenbloom, Crispin, and Kakutami on here and not Adam Kirsch – Michiko especially is a cut-rate hysteric.

Even when I don't quite know his point, reading John Leonard's ecstatic reviews...is a real pleasure. There was a review of the book Positively 4th Street (about the Village and Joan Baez and her sister?) that made me smile. Although I can't forgive his unkind words about James Agee. Still, I love Leonard.

You left off Ben Lytal of The New York Sun: he is brilliant. He is a strong reader and holds writers to a high standard.

Yes I aggree with you. Thanks for your comment

Agree entirely on Woods, also in his estimate that Updike has become intellectually lazy, except when he writes about visual art. KAKUTANI has grave weaknesses, very auntiesh when it comes to responding to something not in standard range; ultimately square, and not in a good way; don't read the Brit reviewers too often so can't opine; Alvarez is a has been as far as I am concerned; NYRB is full of all kinds of hacks at this point; the editor has gotten lazy and reactionary in his dotage;; Rosenbaum is not an interesting mind either- right that's what it comes down to: minds encountering; both Dirda and Yardley at WaPo do good work; I much liked Grimes at NYT when he was reviewing for the daily; he now does great obits of dead writers!; see them expiring, lots of time to write a fine obit; the incredibly industrious Liesl Shillinger [she must have at least a twin] is invariably enjoyable, but not very deep; I think John Leonard has done great work over the years; Adam Kirsch is not first rate I noticed the other day in a piece on Adorno - the test of a critic is whether he skims along the surface, if you know his subject in depth you can tell whether he is faking it; not first rate yet, but he's still young; anyone who thinks Ben Lytal is brilliant needs to have their heads examined; he's a fake who doesn't really know the work of the writers he writes about as I noticed half a dozen times: six chances with me and you are out!!; not as bad as my American bête noire Lee Siegel, but getting there; of course with Harold Bloom we are on an entirely different level of seriousness, in strange deep waters; anyone remember Wieselthier of the New Republic???? My area of speciality is the work of Peter Handke: that has been the hand in the fire for critics for nearly fifty years: and it is amazing how few have not flinched; you can't bull shit your way around!!

I could suggest Mr Benjamin Schwarz as one of the best critics in English speaking world. He is editor of The Atlantic magazine.
I would like to add 2 names from Spanish speaking world: Mr Hugo Estenssoro and Mr Martin Schifino. Both critics write for Revista de Libros (Madrid).

Yes, he's primarily a film critic for the New Yorker, but he wrote many book reviews when he was at The Independent, and he's done many fine book reviews for the New Yorker; in particular, one review was among the best I ever read, a book on T.S. Eliot, authored by Christopher Ricks.

Lane is a first-rate critic, and sometimes I think he slumming as a movie critic; he might be ready to hang-up the cineaste gig and regular critique the works in a format more befitting of his considerable wit and intelligence.