QUIET STREET: On American Privilege, by Nick McDonellIn the preface to his 11th book, the novelist and journalist Nick McDonell makes a very contemporary gesture of transparency by telling us how much he was paid to write it. Made deeply uneasy by the entitlement of America’s ruling class — an entitlement he himself took for granted as a child — he doesn’t have any extraordinary insight into why things are the way they are, or how they might be made otherwise. He relates these stories with a wince, though little in them seems all that groundbreakingly depraved. He and his Buckley schoolmates referred to the cafeteria workers by an unkind nickname. He once went to a wedding reception where there were four bars.

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Persons: Nick McDonell, McDonell, —, Thomas Piketty, Anand Giridharadas, Buckley Organizations: Buckley, Harvard, Devon Yacht Club Locations: East Coast, Manhattan