The Week’s Best Longreads: The Daily Beast Picks for Dec. 1, 2012

‘The Truce on Drugs’Benjamin Wallace-Wells, New York

From the marijuana growers of Humboldt County to the narcotics cops of Baltimore, from the voters of Colorado and Washington to the governments of Mexico and Central America, a negotiated surrender is being implemented in the war on drugs. But will it be enough to end the fighting?

‘Revenge of the Reality-Based Community’Bruce Bartlett, The American Conservative

My life on the Republican right—and how I saw it all go wrong.

‘The Insourcing Boom’Charles Fishman, The Atlantic

After years of offshore production, General Electric is moving much of its far-flung appliance-manufacturing operations back home. It is not alone. An exploration of the startling, sustainable, just-getting-started return of industry to the United States.

‘Loving a Child on the Fringe’Cristina Nehring, Slate

A terrified single mother falls in love with her Down-syndrome daughter.

‘Young and the Restless: On Brigham Young’Chris Lehmann, The Nation

How the American Moses became America’s first spiritual manager in the wilderness of Scripture-infused capitalism.

‘The Salman Rushdie Case’Zoë Heller, The New York Review of Books

The world is as large and as wide as it ever was; it’s just Rushdie who got small.

For more great longreads, visit our friends at Longreads.com.