James Fallows

I really should have mentioned this in time for the long, book-reading-friendly "festive" period stretching from Thanksgiving to the New Year holidays, but, hey, I was reading the book myself then. And Inauguration Day, MLK Day, Chinese New Year, etc are still ahead, and it's still summer reading period in Australia. So:

If you're looking for a good, lengthy, high-end-diversion read, let me suggest The Twenty-Year Death, by Ariel S. Winter. Cover shown at right, when I was reading the book at Thanksgiving time. This is part of the "Hard Case Crime" series that I've discussed over the years, for instance here back in 2008  and here about a year ago. The series is a combination of resurrected noir classics, with 1950s-and-earlier cover art, and original works.

Twenty-year is in the brand-new category, and is quite a tour de force. It is long because it is actually three novels, with an overlapping set of characters. The first is in the style of Georges Simenon; the second, Raymond Chandler; and the third, the immortal (and amoral*) Jim Thompson. The Simenon story is set in France in 1931, and the Chandler and Thompson episodes in greater L.A., in 1941 and 1951 respectively. For my taste, Winter's evocation of each writer's stye and sensibility becomes steadily more effective as the book goes on, so that by the end the Thompson section could fit right along such bleak classics as The Killer Inside Me. If you're in the mood for this kind of thing, this is the thing to read.

This is Winter's first novel. Keep writing!
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* For later discussion: Why I am drawn to the noir writers who portray amoral-and-worse characters from the inside, ranging from Thompson to Patricia Highsmith to Gillian Flynn of Gone Girl. Hmm, maybe this is a question I should not ask.

Clive Crook has written a wonderful appreciation of Dreaming in Chinese, by Deborah Fallows, who for this and many other reasons I am delighted to say is my wife. The book has received a lot of positive reviews, but I think Clive comes closer than anyone else to capturing its spirit and value. Check it out -- Clive's item, and the book.

I am also grateful to Ian Johnson and Jeffrey Wasserstrom, themselves the authors of a number of very valuable books about China (and, in Johnson's case, on Europe-and-Islam as well), for a year-end wrapup of books about China, at the Asia Society's site. Their discussion of the books they're considering, whose covers are shown in the collage below, makes me want to get and read the two I haven't already seen. And of course I am grateful that they include China Airborne in their list (and for Johnson's previous article about it in the NY Review of Books).

 Thanks to all. 

My wife and I look forward to these next few days in Boston -- the place where she and I met, the place where I spent ages 1 to 2, the place where my sister now lives.

On Wednesday afternoon, Dec. 5, I'll be at MIT's Media Lab from 4:30 to 6 for a presentation called "An American in China." I think that would be me! Details here. Admission free.

On Thursday evening, my wife and I will be at Porter Square Books in Cambridge at 7:00pm. Details here.

This might be the moment to mention that the estimable Tyler Cowen, of George Mason University and the Marginal Revolution blog, has recently said that:

My favorite nonfiction book this year has been James Fallows's "China Airborne." On the surface it's about aviation in China, but it's also one of the best books on China ever, one of the best books on industrial organization in years, and an excellent treatment of economic growth. It's also readable and fun.

 The greatness of Tyler Cowen knows no limits. But you'd probably want to check it out for yourself. See you in Boston/Cambridge.

1) Kill Decision, by Daniel Suarez. Over the months Atlantic writers have considered how much less attractive military-drone technology will seem, from the American perspective, when it is no longer a U.S. monopoly. See installments by Steve Clemons, Robert Wright, and me, including allusions to David Ignatius's novel Bloodmoney.

In Ignatius's book, drones were an incidental motivating factor. In Daniel Suarez's Kill Decision, they are the center of the action. Timely, cautionary -- and of course very interesting.


2) The Party Is Over, by Mike Lofgren.

The item posted a few minutes ago on this site, which is part of the 'China Takes Off' special coverage we are featuring this month, is drawn from the introduction to my book China Airborne, whose official pub date is a week from today. Also: the current issue of Popular Science has a nice (in my view) excerpt from the book describing how China is planning to cope with the environmental consequences of its aerospace boom.

A few words to put this excerpt in context. It describes my wild-and-woolly first encounter with the world of small-plane flight in China, soon after I moved there in 2006. The larger point of the book is to ask whether the whole roiling, exciting, fast-changing, uncontrollable Chinese "miracle" of the past generation will lead the country to a further level of technological and economic sophistication -- or limits of various sorts are now coming into view. That is, it's a "China Takes Off" question. This section gives a glimpse of an area where China's government strategists and individual visionaries (and boosters and idealists) are trying hardest, and fastest, to remake their country's fortunes -- and their own.

A word to aviators: the last part of this excerpt describes how Peter Claeys, my friend who was "pilot in command" for this flight, and I reacted when the instrument-landing beam at Zhuhai airport momentarily failed. I have deliberately put the description in slow-mo terms. In reality, no more than two or three seconds passed between an indication of trouble and our glimpse through the clouds. Claeys's hand was on the throttle instants away from pushing it full-forward for the "go missed" procedure. But three seconds of chronological time felt like about ten years of emotional time, which is why I have described it the way I did.

Now, to the photos. I mentioned that we had some trouble finding "AvGas" to get the plane fueled in the first place. This is the kind of thing I had in mind. This is an actual photo of refueling the plane at the Changsha airport, about an hour before we took off. That's Claeys in the truck along with staff members of the Broad Air Conditioning company. I explain in the book why the Broad people were involved.




Here is how it looked when the same plane was being refueled in Japan, on another trip I took with Claeys.



As I explained several years ago, the two photos reminded me that Japan was all about the way of doing things, and China is all about finding a way to do things.

This is a trifecta! I'm able to knit together three previous contacts and/or themes.

#1: Patrick Anderson, who was long ago my mentor/boss on the Carter '76 campaign team, and who since then has been a book writer and regular book reviewer for the Washington Post.

#2: The late Donald Westlake, a master of the comedic crime novel who was so prolific that he adopted a whole slew of pen names, much as Michael Crichton did, to avoid possible recoil at the sheer quantity of his (nonetheless very good) work. Previous mention here.

#3: Charles Ardai, whose wonderful Hard Case crime-novel series I've raved about before.

#1 -> #2 -> #3 harmonic convergence triple play: Two days ago in the Washington Post,  Anderson reviewed The Comedy is Finished, a recently discovered book by Westlake, that is coming out under Ardai's Hard Case imprint. (The book also has one of Hard Case's trademark 1950s pulp-look covers, at right. Another example is below -- from a book by Ardai himself under his alias, Aleas.) I would be a fool to ignore this combination of auguries, so I've ordered the book. Will check in with results.

There's a lot of politicking still ahead of us, so to pace myself I need a break from insights about the Live Free or Die state and whether it will support a "Santorum surge," and so on. In case you're in a similar mood, here is a tip for enjoyable political reading this weekend:

You can go to your local bookstore, should one quaintly still exist, or look online for Walter Shapiro's One-Car Caravan, his idiosyncratic and entirely charming report on the early stages of the 2004 presidential campaign. The book's publication date is 2003, which is a clue to what is unusual in its approach. Walter Shapiro (disclosure: a long-time friend) began covering the field of Democratic aspirants two years before the election, in 2002. At the time, John Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean, Dick Gephardt, et al had no media pools following them and were meeting potential supporters and donors in groups of two or three. Walter traipsed around the country with them, and his resulting report has the kind of timeless texture and insight about politics that you also find in the (better-known and much longer) What It Takes, Richard Ben Cramer's wonderful account of the 1988 campaign.

It is also a sympathetic and human book, in an enriching rather than a sappy way. One of the surprises of the book is how much Walter Shapiro ends up, yes, liking John Kerry, against Shapiro's own anti-snob instincts and contrary to the well-established image of Kerry as a stiff. He makes Kerry likable to the reader, too -- maybe the DNC should have thought of airdropping the book over Ohio in 2004. The book also has this to say about the process we're now living through:

As a political reporter, I am prepared to offer a spirited defense of New Hampshire's outsized role in presidential politics. Nowhere else in the nation do voters display such fidelity to old-fashioned civic obligations.... New Hampshire may be a living monument to participatory democracy, but what in God's name is the justification for making the Iowa caucuses the campaign equivalent of the book of Genesis?

He goes on to explain his complaint about what the Iowa caucuses have done to politics, journalism, and American life. I am biased in Walter Shapiro's favor. He and I started out at the Washington Monthly together back in the Watergate era, and just after Walter's own quixotic attempt as a 25-year-old to unseat an incumbent Republican congressman in Michigan. But you don't have to know him to find this book enjoyable and still-relevant. Check it out.

Come by the Princeton Public Library, on Witherspoon Street, at 3pm to see someone I know to be a great speaker (my wife) talk about what I know to be a great book (her Dreaming in Chinese). I mention this both out of uxorious support and in a desire to be helpful, since several sites had the event listed at varying times (1pm, 7:30pm, etc). It's actually at 3. Tell her hello.

Thirty years ago, Pierre Sprey (left) was, like John Boyd and Chuck Spinney, one of the protagonists of my book National Defense. He is a great, innovative thinker who is always worth listening to, and tonight on C-Span he hosts an interview with William Hartung, about Hartung's book Prophets of War. Airing at 9pm Eastern; full schedule here. Very much worth checking out (or setting your TiVo for).  

I generally dread year-end lists of anything, but the worthiness of the book business makes me happy to pitch in on "best book of the year" compendia. In my enthusiasm, I've contributed to three such lists:

- The Atlantic's "Best Book I Read This Year" slideshow feature, here. Happily I've already read many of the books recommended by my colleagues, but I'm starting on the ones I haven't, beginning with James Gibney's nominee, The White Tiger.

- Foreign Affairs recently compiled a list of suggested books for the years ahead; I weighed in with a bunch, all of which I heartily endorse.

- Today Salon had its list too, for which I recommended a book that one of my colleagues picked for the Atlantic list. The last one I mention here is my sentimental favorite of all the year's offerings.

Read 'em all! Enjoy.    

... well, congratulations! We lived there for a total of four years during and after my wife's time as a U of Texas doctoral student in linguistics, and like all former residents have memories that are (pleasantly) dominated by barbecue joints, Tex-Mex, beer halls, music, Barton Springs, etc. Plus, of course, "study" and "work." The big constant in Austin life is the "Oh, it used to be so great here, but growth has spoiled the 'real' Austin" lament. That is what we heard from old timers on arrival in the mid-70s, and it's what we've heard on all return visits since. I'm sure the complaint is always true -- and always false, because it still seems pretty great.

This weekend in particular, Austin will be graced by the 2010 Texas Book Festival, an event started by Laura Bush when she was the state's First Lady in the mid 1990s. I've mentioned several times over the past year -- including here, here, and here -- my admiration and enthusiasm for Matterhorn, the majestic novel of the Vietnam war by Karl Marlantes. I'm delighted to have a chance to interview Karl Marlantes at the festival, at 10am Saturday morning. Details here and here. Be there!

Also, at 3:15, I'll have a chance to interview another book festival author: a product of the University of Texas's linguistics department who has written about the pleasures and satisfactions of learning the Chinese language. Looking forward to that one too.

.... the Dreaming in Chinese world tour has its next stop at the Harvard Book Store, in Cambridge, at 7pm. Details here. The author will certainly be there. All other work circumstances in DC going well, her husband will be too. Scenes from a west coast stop ten days ago:

First stop on gala West Coast Dreaming in Chinese tour, at the legendary Powell's Books.

To add to the list of "good fiction set in modern China," check out Rock Paper Tiger, by Lisa Brackmann. It's a mystery/action novel that pretty much pulls off something I would have thought improbable: combining an account of Iraq-war drama (the emphasis is on Abu Ghraib-type themes), with a portrayal of the urban China of these past few years, complete with overhyped art scene, dissident bloggers, lots of young expats, and constant uncertainty about what the government will permit or crack down on. Along the way, lots about the online gaming world that often seems the main passion of youthful Chinese, especially males.

I can't judge the fidelity of the Iraq-torture scenes, or of the games, for that matter. But the off-hand observations about Beijing -- and Taiyuan and Xi'an -- ring true to me, and are very different from what you'll hear from the standard media or business bigshot making a drop-by visit. Sample after the jump. Below, Brackmann in a photo from her site, when first in China in 1979.


This is a racier version of expat life in Beijing than I know about first hand -- oh these kids! It's obviously unsentimental about contemporary Chinese values and governance, but if anything it's tougher on America's. Definitely worth reading.

Segue to next topic: I got the book while on my current trip through China, so my choices for buying it were online via Amazon's Kindle, or online via Barnes and Noble's nook. By making the comparison, I discovered some interesting things about the strategies the two companies are pursuing, plus the similarities and differences between their devices. More on those topics shortly.

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1) Usually when I mention an item in a new issue of The Atlantic, I make sure to add "subscribe!" Half schtick, half serious - and the remaining half serious too. This month, I'll say for variety: check out the newsstand version of our May issue. It's a long book, which I have read obsessively this past week. It is truly a magnificent work.

Whatever your occasion for giving presents, books are the present to give. (I try like crazy to avoid the generic term "holiday," so I'll say: Christmas presents for me, Hanukkah presents for you,  Kwanzaa for somebody else, and general midwinter cheer for another person. Whatever they are, I'm going to call them "presents," and we can all get along.)

One worth considering: The Fourth Part of the World, by Toby Lester. It's a great, absorbing, richly illustrated, makes-you-feel-smarter-and-better-for-having-read-it chronicle of the race to map what became the Americas five centuries ago. Toby Lester explains the idea behind the book in this clip:


There's also a nice Flash-based interactive version of the influential 1507 map at the center of his story, here. Toby Lester is a friend and one-time Atlantic colleague -- but part of the reason we're friends is the sensibility and intelligence he exhibits in this book. Worth checking out.

 

Thirty years ago this summer, Jimmy Carter delivered his famous "Crisis of Confidence" adddress to the nation, generally mis-identified as the "malaise" speech -- a word he didn't use. I was gone from the Carter speechwriting empire by then. My successor and longtime friend Hendrik Hertzberg was in the hot seat that time. (Below, screenshot of Carter at the start of the speech.)


Recently Kevin Mattson, of Ohio University, published a book about that speech, its origins, and its aftermath, called What the Heck Are You Up to, Mr. President? This evening, October 7, I'll be joining him in Washington for a discussion of the speech, the book, and the general phenomenon of political calls, like Carter's, for "higher purpose" and "rebirth of citizenship." A live stream of the program, from 6:30pm to 7:30pm Eastern time, will be here.

Other details about the event, including the many political worthies who will be on hand, and sponsorship by the Progressive Book Club and the Center for American Progress, are here. As Mattson knows, I have some quarrels about first-hand details of his reconstructed account. But I certainly support the larger case he is making in his book. 

Books I've meant to mention individually, but which I'll never get to if I wait for time to do that. From the left in this first shot:

Two Kinds of Time, by Graham Peck, introduction by Robert Kapp. Riveting and hilarious accounts of travels through WW II-era China by an American diplomat (and litterateur and artist), fascinating in their own right and all the more rewarding because of their resonance with the superficially-different China of 60+ years later.

Typhoon, by Charles Cumming, previously mentioned here and elsewhere. I now have a sense of why this conceivably might have been detained by Chinese authorities when I ordered it before. It is largely about a CIA plot to destabilize the Chinese regime by working with Muslim/Uighur nationalists in Xinjiang region. If you're looking for an action-and-romance driven spy novel, as opposed to one mainly about mood and psychology, check it out.

Beijing Coma, by the exiled Chinese writer Ma Jian. You want dark, about the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen? This will give you very, very dark. Hint: the coma in the title is not simply figurative.

Still on the China beat: Global Shanghai, by Jeffrey Wasserstrom, very interesting historical/ intellectual / cultural analysis of the ways my former home town has been perceived as both a Chinese and a non-Chinese city.

Finally, for Something Different: A Romance on Three Legs, by Katie Hafner. The author is a good friend, but even if she weren't I would find this a masterful demonstration of how to make a subject you didn't know you were interested in page-turning reading from beginning to end. The description of how the "action" of a piano actually works will stand as an example of how to explain complex processes lucidly.

In Blogcritics, by Xujun Eberlein, about Postcards from Tomorrow Square, a review whose first two or three paragraphs capture what I've been trying to do. I know it's not seemly to point out one's own good reviews, but this one meant a lot to me and I note it for the record. (Reprinted in China Beat here.) In the same vein, gratitude to Fareed Zakaria for a generous mention of the book on yesterday's GPS show.

And while I'm at it, I'll be doing appearances for the book at the Shanghai Literary Festival on March 7 and 8 and the Beijing Literary Festival on March 19.

Ok, I've got this out of my system now. Back to the F-22 etc.