James Fallows

James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States, and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. His latest book, China Airborne, was published in early May. More

James Fallows is based in Washington as a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He has worked for the magazine for nearly 30 years and in that time has also lived in Seattle, Berkeley, Austin, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, and Beijing. He was raised in Redlands, California, received his undergraduate degree in American history and literature from Harvard, and received a graduate degree in economics from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. In addition to working for The Atlantic, he has spent two years as chief White House speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, two years as the editor of US News & World Report, and six months as a program designer at Microsoft. He is an instrument-rated private pilot. He is also now the chair in U.S. media at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, in Australia.

Fallows has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award five times and has won once; he has also won the American Book Award for nonfiction and a N.Y. Emmy award for the documentary series Doing Business in China. He was the founding chairman of the New America Foundation. His two most recent books, Blind Into Baghdad (2006) and Postcards From Tomorrow Square (2009), are based on his writings for The Atlantic. His latest book, China Airborne, was published in early May. He is married to Deborah Fallows, author of the recent book Dreaming in Chinese. They have two married sons.

 
Fallows welcomes and frequently quotes from reader mail sent via the "Email" button below. Unless you specify otherwise, we consider any incoming mail available for possible quotation -- but not with the sender's real name unless you explicitly state that it may be used. If you are wondering why Fallows does not use a "Comments" field below his posts, please see previous explanations here and here.

The squeegee men of Shanghai

Technology
I like China. I like Shanghai. I like most Chinese people I see and meet. But I'm getting pretty tired of China's big-city counterpart to the squeegee men whom Rudolph Giuliani was famed for chasing off the streets of New York. Forget running for president, Rudy. Come deal with the shoe-squeegee men of Shanghai.

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It is tedious to say this again, but there is a HUGE logical problem with the Iraq policy

Technology
At President Bush's meeting with the Democratic leadership over the weekend, the following line drew applause, according to the transcript released by the White House:
And I have made it clear to the Iraqi government, just like I made it clear to the American people, our commitment is not open ended.

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Where Congress can draw the line: no war with Iran

Technology
Deciding what to do next about Iraq is hard -- on the merits, and in the politics. It's hard on the merits because whatever comes next, from "surge" to "get out now" and everything in between, will involve suffering, misery, and dishonor. It's just a question of by whom and for how long. On a balance-of-misery basis, my own view changed last year from "we can't afford to leave" to "we can't afford to stay." And the whole issue is hard in its politics because even Democrats too young to remember Vietnam know that future Karl Roves will dog them for decades with accusations of "cut-and-run" and "betraying" troops unless they can get Republicans to stand with them on limiting funding and forcing the policy to change. By comparison, Iran is easy: on the merits, in the politics. War with Iran would be a catastrophe that would make us look back fondly on the minor inconvenience of being bogged down in Iraq. While the Congress flounders about what, exactly, it can do about Iraq, it can do something useful, while it still matters, in making clear that it will authorize no money and provide no endorsement for military action against Iran.

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Where Congress Can Draw the Line

Magazine February 2007

No war with Iran

Sympathy For, Yes, Microsoft

Magazine January 2007

Vista's worldwide release is greeted in China with in-your-face piracy

Sympathy for, yes, Microsoft

Technology
As indicated earlier, I have not had a completely blissful experience trying out the pre-release versions of Windows Vista and Office2007. But I completely believe what I wrote a few months ago in the Atlantic: these are both very good products and well worth buying. Office's improvements are immediately visible in a snazzy, elegant, fit-and-finish way. The most important changes in Vista are largely invisible internal improvements, although it also has a gee-whiz factor in its "Aero" graphics presentation system, which is notably more attractive than any previous Microsoft standard. This new feature of Vista requires (as the new Office does not) more raw horsepower than most computers bought before 2006 are likely to have, which is one of several reasons why it makes sense to buy Vista pre-installed on your next computer but not to upgrade the one you already have. So I respect and appreciate what Microsoft has achieved -- and empathize with them after reading in today's English-language (and state-controlled) Shanghai Daily that, on the very day the software first goes on sale worldwide: "As always, Microsoft will have to battle piracy, as Vista knockoffs are already being sold on the street for 10 yuan." Ten yuan, or kuai, is about $1.30.

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How the Aussie Open will make me into a better person

Technology
As noted earlier, the just-concluded Australian Open tennis championship was the first sports event I've seen live on TV in more than six months. My enforced weaning-away from those previous idle hours moaning about the Redskins or wondering about split-times at the Tour de France is no doubt virtuous and self-improving and so on. But here is what I learned from the one truly startling participant at the Aussie Open: not the elegant Federer nor the gutsy Serena Williams but the computerized instant-replay system for disputed line calls. For anyone who has played tennis in the past or plans to play it again, the results of this system are worth serious, life-changing contemplation. Here is the three-part logic:

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Full State of the Union "deconstruction" now posted...

Technology
... on the Atlantic's site, here. A less artful looking, but perhaps easier to read, version begins immediately below. Here are the big points about this speech, then some line by line comments.

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Post Mortem: State of the Union

Magazine January 2007

Bush's 2007 State of the Union address, annotated by The Atlantic's James Fallows

Post Mortem: State of the Union

Magazine January 2007

Bush's 2007 State of the Union address, annotated by The Atlantic's James Fallows

And by the way, if anyone is watching Jim Webb...

Technology
I am biased, but I thought this was the most formidable response to the President's speech the Democrats could possibly have offered. The controlled ferocity of the last two minutes of that talk, which covered what is often called "up and down" loyalty -- the loyalty and respect troops owe their commanders, but the competence and judgment their commanders owe them -- had the good-for-TV quality of being hard to turn away from, and the unfakeable sense of coming directly from Webb's mind and heart. More on this speech, too, tomorrow. (And, yes, it ended "God Bless America.")

State of the Union Address 2007: instant analysis

Technology
As over the last few years, line-by-line speechwriter style analysis available on the Atlantic's web site tomorrow morning, U.S. time. Main point right now: This was two different speeches, perhaps three. The first speech, on domestic policy, was list-like, uninspired, and uninspiring -- apparently even to the President himself, who trudged through it as if seeing the text for the first time. The second speech, about terrorism, Iraq, and foreign policy, reawakened Bush's own interest and advanced his case about as well as a speech at this point could. The third speech, the brief, closing "Lenny Skutnik" portion, was the best part of the speech and the most skillful execution of this ritual that has been seen in years. And, oh, yes, the President couldn't help himself. His text took the bold step of not ending with "God Bless America." But this apparently was so startling that President Bush had to say, "God bless....." to know that he was done.

State of the Union Address 2007: Instant Analysis

Magazine January 2007

Atlantic correspondent and former Presidential speechwriter James Fallows shares his impressions of Bush's speech

How China is making me into a better person (sort of)

Technology
The Australian Open is underway right now; on TV I just watched Andy Roddick beat Mario Ancic in a dramatic five-set match. In my US-based phases of life, my view on the Aussie Open was: who cares? I love tennis, but the matches happened while I was sleeping, and I can't see the point of watching even the greatest match on TV if I already know how it turned out. (Seeing top-tier tennis players perform in person is completely different. There's still the element of suspense, but that's a detail. Even watching Andre Agassi or Pete Sampras warm up, as I've done from the side of practice courts, is utterly riveting, as you see how their reflexes, power, speed, and concentration differ from those of normal human beings. As a teenager I sat a few yards away from Arthur Ashe as he played an exhibition match on my high school courts. I don't think I took my eyes off him.) The newly-fascinating Australian Open made me realize: most of the reason to see anything on TV, at least for me, is the real-time uncertainty about what will happen next.

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A four-minute rebuttal to the "surge" plan

Technology
This link comes courtesy of my friend Richard Samuels, an expert in all things Japanese at MIT. If it is already widely known, sorry; it was news to me. It is a "debate" on Al Jazeera between a prominent Sunni and a prominent Shiite Iraqi over the execution of Saddam Hussein. Watch this to the end -- just over four minutes, but well spent -- and think again of the benchmarks President Bush has set for America's continued commitment to Iraq. A crackdown on sectarian militias, a fair sharing of oil revenues, a general sense of national concord. Watch, and wonder. The link is here.

A new record for stupidity in the "Global War on Terror"

Technology
All right, I am biased. The most egregious empty-symbolism measures to "protect" Americans often involve aviation -- because airplanes attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, because airplanes scare many people, and because the inconvenienced community of aviation enthusiasts is so small. Because tens of millions of people take commercial airline flights, some sanity eventually returns to TSA airline-screening rules. For example: allowing tiny tubes of toothpaste or hand cream back onto flights. The measures that affect small-plane travel tend to get stuck at their lunatic extreme, since so few people are exposed to them and see how nutty they actually are. When I was flying in the United States, I was one of that small number; that's why I'm biased. I had thought that the rules for "defense" of Washington DC airspace against small planes set the standard in foolishness. But we have a new winner.

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Shanghai as hub of the universe

Technology
Today, a Thursday, my wife and I had lunch with some good friends from Boston, passing through Shanghai after a few days in Beijing. Another set of American friends this coming Saturday, and different ones on Sunday. A friend from Europe passing through next Monday night. Five times in six days is unusual:

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The painfully obvious problem at the core of the "surge" strategy

Technology
I don't know why the Democrats have not made the following a central part of their criticism of the "New Way Forward" in Iraq: On the one hand, President Bush says that the stakes are too high even to consider the possibility of "failure" in Iraq. From his speech last week:
Failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States. The consequences of failure are clear: Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people. On September the 11th, 2001, we saw what a refuge for extremists on the other side of the world could bring to the streets of our own cities. For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq.
But on the other hand, it turns there are, in fact, circumstances in which the United States can accept the failure of this effort.

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On the content of the "surge" speech

Technology
This was an intelligent speech, carefully written and delivered with appropriate gravitas. In striking contrast to the President's rhetoric of a year or two ago, it addressed some actual objections to the Administration's policy. Most of the time, it avoided overblown claims. Etc. But I will bet anyone any amount of money that three or four months from now, we will look back on this as yet another "false dawn" announcement -- like the hugely publicized National Strategy for Victory in Iraq of November, 2005. At the time, this strategy was going to correct all previous errors; now, it's a previous error itself. Here's one passage from tonight's speech that illustrates why.

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A trivial-seeming but important detail in the "surge" speech

Technology
These were the last words of President Bush's speech just now defending the commitment of more troops to Iraq:
We go forward with trust that the Author of Liberty will guide us through these trying hours. Thank you and good night.
A spiritual allusion? Sure. One of the skillful and continuing traits of George W. Bush's rhetoric has been the deft use of religious references that will be noticed by the part of the audience most likely to welcome them and that will skid right past the parts of the audience they might annoy. In many of his early speeches, written on the Michael Gerson watch, the President used "Providence" to similar effect. Like Author of Liberty in this speech, Providence was capitalized in the released versions of the speeches, to make the spiritual resonance clear. But the most startling aspect of the conclusion was the phrase it did not include.

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James Fallows
from the Magazine

The Art of Staying Focused in a Distracting World

The tech-industry veteran Linda Stone on how to pay attention

Jerry Brown's Political Reboot

In his reprise as governor, he's been as ruthlessly practical as he's been reflective,…

Mars, Our First Outpost on the Final Frontier

James Fallows talks with space entrepreneur Eric Anderson about the next wave of space exploration.