The Week’s Best Longreads: The Daily Beast Picks for Feb. 18, 2012

From the wild rise and fall of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom to the making of gay-marriage foe Maggie Gallagher, The Daily Beast picks the best journalism from around the Web this week.

A Newsman Breaks the Mold in the Arab World
Anthony Shadid, The Washington Post

In this story from 2006, Anthony Shadid, who died of an asthma attack Thursday while covering Syria for The New York Times, profiled the editor of Dubai’s al-Arabiya news channel. (For more of Shadid’s best stories, click here.)

Kim Dotcom, Pirate King
Brian Gruley, David Fickling, and Cornelius Rahn, Bloomberg Businessweek

Is Megaupload's founder a criminal mastermind, or the world's most entertaining scapegoat? A file-sharing wizard's ridiculous rise and fall.

The Making of a Gay Marriage Foe
Mark Oppenheimer, Salon

How Maggie Gallagher's college pregnancy made her a single mom, and a traditional-marriage zealot.

How Companies Learn Your Secrets
Charles Duhigg, The New York Times Magazine

Your shopping habits reveal even the most personal information—like when you’re going to have a baby.

Rhino Wars
Peter Gwin, National Geographic

The horn, whose black-market value rivals that of gold, could be the rhino's curse—or salvation.

How State Beat Church
Andrew Sullivan, Newsweek

Conservatives gleefully revived the culture wars. But they’re not winning. How Obama set a trap for the right.

For more great longreads, check out our friends at Longreads.com.