Longreads

The Week’s Best Longreads for July 27, 2013

The Daily Beast picks the best journalism from around the web this week. By David Sessions.

Should Reddit Be Blamed for Spreading a Smear?

Jay Caspian King, The New York Times Magazine

When the Sunil Tripathi rumor went viral after the Boston Marathon bombing, it laid bare the dysfunctional codependence between new and old media.

They Know Much More Than You Think

James Banford, The New York Review of Books

The NSA and its predecessors have been gaining secret, illegal access to the communications of Americans for nearly a century.

To Steal a Mockingbird

Mark Seal, Vanity Fair

The notoriously private author Harper Lee is now waging a public courtroom battle. Her lawsuit charges that in 2007 her agent, Samuel Pinkus, duped the frail 80-year-old Lee into assigning him the copyright to her only book, To Kill a Mockingbird—then diverted royalties from the beloved 1960 classic.

How Gay Marriage Went Mainstream

Richard Posner, The New Republic

A revisionist history of a social revolution.

Enjoy the Rules

Freddie de Boer, The New Inquiry

How long will American workers tolerate a system in which full-time employment is necessary for individual survival, yet on track to be placed permanently out of reach by the direction of capitalism?

You Can Live Forever

Andrew Romano, Newsweek

Is immortality plausible? Or is it just quack science? Two experts face off.

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