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The Week’s Best Longreads: The Daily Beast Picks for Jan. 21, 2012

From Andrew Sullivan’s Washington-shaking essay on Obama to the end of George Lucas’s career, The Daily Beast picks the best journalism from around the Web this week.

Obama’s Long Game
Andrew Sullivan, Newsweek


The right calls him a socialist, the left says he sucks up to Wall Street, and independents think he’s a wimp. But the president may just end up outsmarting them all.

The Good Wife
Ariel  Levy, The New Yorker


Can Callista Gingrich save her husband from himself?

What Future for Occupy Wall Street?
Michael Greenberg, New York Review of Books


As Occupy marches on the Supreme Court, the prospects of its survival.

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George Lucas Is Ready to Roll the Credits
Bryan Curtis, The New York Times Magazine


The filmmaker has one last mission: to prove that, with Red Tails, he can still make the kind of movie everyone will want to see.

How Empire Ruled the World
Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Le Monde Diplomatique


Compared to 600 years of Ottoman Empire and two millennia of imperial Chinese rule, the nation-state is just a blip on the historical horizon.

5.4
Richard Beck, n+1


A critical history of the indie-music fan’s online bible, Pitchfork Media, from its inception in 1995 to the present.

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About Longreads

Every week, we pick the best long-form journalism from the newest magazines and journals.

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