Longreads: Daily Beast Picks Week's Best, Aug. 6, 2011

The Daily Beast picks the best journalism from around the Web this week.

“Getting Bin Laden” Nicholas Schmidle, The New Yorker

Detailing "what really happened that night in Abbottabad," the author presents a colorful tick-tock of the Navy SEALs Team Six unit as they silently stormed into Osama bin Laden's compound and took out the terrorist leader with one shot to the chest and a second above his left eye.

"Tencent: March of the Penguins" Bruce Einhorn and Brad Stone, Bloomberg Businessweek

On the rise, success, and future ambitions of China's behemoth Internet company Tencent, Bloomberg Businessweek lays bare the heart and soul of the often-criticized company that's flush with cash and has the attention of tech watchers worldwide.

"Enter the Cyber-dragon" Michael Joseph Gross, Vanity Fair

For years, reveals Michael Joseph Gross, hackers have been quietly conducting virtual corporate espionage, stealing sensitive business secrets and private data from some of America's top corporations (Google! Dupont! Lockheed Martin!). They’re suspected to be operating under the authority—or redirected eyes—of the Chinese government.

"Beyond Angry Birds" Tom Bissell, Grantland

Development studios have spent years and billions of dollars perfecting the process of developing the high-end, narrative, triple-A videogame (Grand Theft Auto, Dead Space, and the like). But then came Angry Birds, and with it a whole slew of cheaply developed, iPad "puzzler" games that have rocked the industry to its core—and shifted the gaming preferences of a generation.

"Death in a Box" Scott Johnson, Guernica

On reporting from a war zone, where the expression "death is all around" takes on visceral meaning, manifesting itself in everything, and everyone, that moves.

”Very Deep in America” Lorrie Moore, The New York Review of Books

A deep-dive review of Friday Night Lights, the recently ended television series set in the fictional West Texas football town of Dillon (inspired by Odessa), and its transition from guilty pleasure to "legitimately brilliant drama."

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Brian Ries

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