Longreads

The Week’s Best Longreads for August 9, 2013

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

Wikileaks’ Teenage Benedict Arnold Ryan Gallagher, SlateHow the FBI used a baby-faced WikiLeaks volunteer to spy on Julian Assange.

TakenSarah Stillman, The New YorkerUnder civil forfeiture, Americans who haven’t been charged with wrongdoing can be stripped of their cash, cars, and even homes. Is that all we’re losing?

How Much Is a Life Worth? James Oliphant, National JournalKen Feinberg, the man tasked with compensating victims after a devastating tragedy, knows the answer—and it’s rarely the same.

The Feminists of Zion Allison Kaplan Sommer and Dahlia Lithwick, The New RepublicWill an unlikely alliance between Orthodox and progressive women will save Israel from fundamentalism?

How Athletes Get Great Jeremy Repanich, OutsideJust train for 10,000 hours, right? Not quite. In his new book, author David Epstein argues that top-shelf athletic performance may be a more complicated formula than we’ve recently come to believe.

Nuke the Cat! Scott Brown, New YorkDamon Lindelof, blockbuster wizard par excellence, explains the inexorable logic of the ever-metastasizing apocalyptic flick.

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