These are golden times for American satirists. After years of relentless brilliance, George Saunders finally seems to have crossed into the mainstream with his absurdist short-story collection "Tenth of December." Now Sam Lipsyte seems to be making his move, backing up his smart and ...

In 1987, when Bruce Springsteen wrote the song "Ain't Got You," he was the biggest rock star in the world. He had vast estates in New Jersey and Beverly Hills, and he had not long returned from a honeymoon at Gianni Versace's villa in ...

There was a sense, when I arrived in Paris a couple of weeks ago, that France was if not quite in meltdown then certainly enduring a profound existential crisis. Unemployment had metastasized to 10.6 percent, and the country's credit rating was in the dumps. President ...

THE ROMANTIC ECONOMIST, by William Nicolson. Short Books, 2013, 304 pp., ￡12 (hardcover) Right at the end of "The Romantic Economist" — nonspoiler alert! — the author William Nicolson starts referring in the third person to "William Nicolson," the protagonist of the pages. It was ...