http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-page_application
My tool of choice is jQuery Mobile. If it weren't for that I'd probably do AngularJS; whatever it takes to shift the processing to the client and make my life easier by not having to muck around in too much JavaScript code.
The point being that this approach works just fine for document centric sites.
Is it more important to shorten the time to display the current request, or to shorten the time for new pages to be rendered? Single-page apps marginally increase the current request's time-to-render in exchange for improving navigation between pages. For some purposes that provides a significant benefit, other times it doesn't.