The Week's Best Longreads

Will Angela Merkel Act, or Won’t She?
Peter Coy, Businessweek

Germany’s chancellor has her reasons for insisting on severe measures to resolve Europe’s economic crisis, but while she stalls, further damage is being done.

Building a Better Mitt Romney-Bot
Robert Draper, The New York Times Magazine

His camp doesn’t need to turn their guy into someone you’d have a beer with. They just need to eliminate the bugs in the machine.

Her Honor
Dahlia Lithwick, New York

People who think Justice Elena Kagan should recuse herself from the looming “Obamacare” case might want to take a closer look at her first term.

One Nation Under Arms
Todd S. Purdum, Vanity Fair

The private papers of the late George F. Kennan, Cold War architect and diplomat extraordinaire, reveal his anguish over the way his famous 1947 warning about Soviet expansionism helped transform the America he loved into one he no longer recognized: a national-security state.

All the Angry People
George Packer, The New Yorker

A man out of work finds community at Occupy Wall Street.

The Sex Addiction Epidemic
Chris Lee, Newsweek

It wrecks marriages, destroys careers, and saps self-worth. Yet Americans are being diagnosed as sex addicts in record numbers. Inside an epidemic.