From The Atlantic Monthly, Ross Douthat on The Return of the Paranoid Style: How the Iraq War and George W. Bush sent the movie industry back to its favorite era—the 1970s (and more); meet Oleg Khintsagov, a small-time hustler in Russia who can get you dried fish, furs, Turkish chandeliers and weapons-grade uranium — he’s not the only one (and more); Calcutta has been renamed; now, with investment on the rise, tech companies moving in, and a growing middle class, can it be reborn? (and more); an English critic decries the decline of his language—and his civilization; Christopher Hitchens reviews Ezra Pound: Poet A Portrait of the Man & His Work Volume I: The Young Genius 1885–1920 by A. David Moody; and a review of Not the Girl Next Door: Joan Crawford, A Personal Biography by Charlotte Chandler.

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