The Week’s Best Longreads: The Daily Beast Picks for October 6, 2012

The League of Dangerous Mapmakers
Robert Draper, The Atlantic

Who’s most to blame for our divisive politics? How about the gerrymanderers quietly deciding where your vote goes. Inside the dark art and modern science of making democracy a lot less democratic.

Did ExxonMobile Pay Torturers?
Ian Shearn and Laird Townsend, Mother Jones

The oil giant claims it has no responsibility for atrocities committed by the government soldiers it hired to protect its plant in Indonesia. Will the Supreme Court agree?

Down and Out in the Top 10
Nitsuh Abebe, New York

The indie-rock quartet Grizzly Bear just released a hit record and sold out Radio City Music Hall. But forget about renting a private jet. Some of them don’t even have health insurance. Welcome to the new rock-star economy.
 
Swallowed by the London Whale
Susan Dominus, The New York Times Magazine

The rise and fall of Ina Drew, whose career at JPMoran came to an end over a $6 billion mistake.

China in Revolt
Eli Friedman, Jacobin

Few in the West are aware of the drama unfolding in today’s “epicenter of global labor unrest.” A scholar of China exposes its tumultuous labor politics.
 
The Blind Faith of the One-Eyed Matador
Karen Russell, GQ

Last fall, one of Spain's greatest matadors took a horn to the face. It was a brutal goring, among the most horrific in the history of bullfighting. Miraculously, Juan Jose Padilla was back in the bullring—sí, fighting bulls—a mere five months later.

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