The Week’s Best Longreads: The Daily Beast Picks for December 8, 2012
From the real story of a CIA financier’s brutal murder to Afghanistan’s basketball culture, The Daily Beast picks the best post-election journalism from around the Web this week.
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The Heiress
Ken Aluetta, The New Yorker
The measured rise of Elisabeth Murdoch.
James Bond and the Killer Bag Lady
Mark Ames and Alexander Zaitchick, Salon
New clues and a powerful Wall St. skeptic challenge the official story of CIA financier Nick Deak’s brutal murder.
The Basketball Diaries, Afghanistan
Peretz Partensky, n+1
Playing basketball was one of the last things I thought I would do in Afghanistan. Yet, there I was, in a foreign land, in a barely comprehensible cultural landscape, in a stinky hotel, mediating an inter-ethnic conflict in the guise of a skirmish on the court.
A Bishop Behind Bars
M.L. Nestel and Jebediah Reed, The Daily
An Amish sect leader tells of the beard-cutting that could lock him up for life.
Chris Hughes is About to Turn 100
Carl Swanson, New York
The Facebook co-founder has already served as Mark Zuckerberg’s in-house humanist and Barack Obama’s digital consigliere. Now, in buying the venerable, century-old New Republic, he’s out to prove that a 29-year-old worth $600 million is just the man to make the “life of the mind” scalable.
An Intimidated Victim Testifies
Allison Yarrow, The Daily Beast
A young woman from Brooklyn’s tightly knit Satmar community breaks with it to stand by her allegation that a community elder raped her.
For more great longreads, visit our friends at Longreads.com.