The Braindead Megaphone (2007)

Some novelists seem to make great reporters. Two of the best journalists of the last 50 years are Norman Mailer and David Foster Wallace; their literary nonfiction is jaw-droppingly good, the equal of their fiction. Maybe it's time to add noted short-story writer George Saunders to this short list. In The Braindead Megaphone, his collection of funny essays and long journalism, the affable author patrols the Mexican border, visits the Buddha Boy in Nepal, and, in the title essay, ribs America's loudmouth TV culture: ''Is all our media stupid? Far from it. But: Is some of our media very stupid? Hoo boy.'' Is Saunders' book on target? Hoo boy. A