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.

Podcast of Blind Into Baghdad interview

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Recently posted here.

Atlantic tech column about Vista and Office2007

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Is here on the Atlantic's web site.

China article in the Atlantic

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It is here, subscribers only. Subscribe!

Dog years and China years

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Thirty years ago I was working on the Carter presidential campaign. That meant going to bed about 2am, getting up about 4:30 am, and cranking out speeches in all the hours in between, via typewriters (yes) while on buses and airplanes. This was the time when I learned that coffee and Coke were the two staple foods. At a campaign stop in Los Angeles after several months of this existence, I ran into Anthony Lewis, reporting on the campaign in his role as columnist for the New York Times. I had met him a few years earlier. "You look terrible!" he said. I was then in my mid-20s, but I told him that I realized I was getting one year older each day on the campaign.

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Improbable but True

Magazine November 2006

James Fallows on how he came to co-write a 1980 Atlantic cover story advocating the draft with Senator-elect Jim Webb

Improbable but true: James Webb-James Fallows joint article on the draft

Technology
I had known Jim Webb for about a year, and had worked for the Atlantic for about the same amount of time, when I proposed to him early in 1980 that we jointly undertake a project for the magazine. The results, published for the first time on the Atlantic's web site, are here (Webb's article) and here (mine); the back story follows.

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Transcript of interview for PBS documentary on Iraq

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Now posted online here (and text appended after the break).

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Other people's celebrities

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A few weeks ago I was on a China Eastern flight from Shanghai to Changsha, in Hunan province. I was in a window seat. The two people next to me, and the three on the other side of the aisle in the same row, were a standard group of hip-looking Chinese in their 20s. When we trudged off the plane and through the baggage area, I was amazed to see a full press gaggle, complete with TV cameras and civilian onlookers, whose members began asking questions, shooting off flash pictures, and screaming in delight when the people in my row came into view. Apparently they were famous, and not by a little!

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Election-watch 2006: Shanghai Edition

Magazine November 2006

Americans who don't like Bush are happy about the recent election results. The Chinese are not so sure.

Election-watch 2006: Shanghai edition

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I have met exactly one person in China who professed admiration for George W. Bush. This was a retired senior PLA officer, no softie himself, who said he respected Bush because "he is tough man." The more common Chinese view resembles what Americans have gotten used to hearing in England, France, Japan, [choose your country] since the run-up to the Iraq war late in 2002. People think the Bush administration has been too high-handed, too ham-handed, and a lot of other things that resemble the way Democrats in America have felt. The day after the midterm elections I was talking to a Chinese academic who said that what Iraq really needed was a strong-willed leader. He got a twinkle in his eye and said, "Why not send them Bush!"

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Yet another very good book

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China Shakes the World, by James Kynge, for many years the FT's correspondent in Beijing. Given his obvious immersion in and affinity for the culture, it is the more impressive when Kynge takes a hard line at the end: The rise of a power that is in the world trading system, but not really of it, poses problems for everyone else. This is a line of analysis I am familiar and sympathetic with -- as it applies to Japan. I have not yet reached that point about China. Not sure why, or whether it's just a matter of time. In any case, this is valuable book.

A mystery of driving explained

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In an article in the December issue of the Atlantic, which is published abnormally late for reasons I don't fully grasp, I mention that the traffic-death rate per mile driven is roughly ten times higher in China than in North America. Nothing so shocking about that:

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China slideshow at the Atlantic, plus Slate

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A narration of daily life in Shanghai and Beijing here, at the Atlantic's site. Of course accompanied by my wife Deb's "Diarist" this week in Slate.

"Talking like a pirate" in Chinese

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For later discussion: the pluses and minuses of studying Chinese versus Japanese. The Cliff's Notes version is that Chinese is on the whole "easier" (streamlined grammar, one pronunciation per character versus many), but is significantly harder for Westerners to pronounce. The Japanese sounds are pretty straightforward. The Chinese ones are not. Oddball pronunciation issue: there is one sound in Chinese, especially in Beijing-accent, that seems entirely impossible -- until you think of the one English sound it resembles. That is the "talking like a pirate" sound. No one knows quite how to spell it -- "arrrrrrrhh!" perhaps -- but everyone knows what it the sound is, and how to produce it. I don't know of any part of "normal" English that this sound resembles, but as long as I think "pirate," I'm OK.

A break from the election: why beta software is bad

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All my adult life I've loved playing with beta software. I like it because -- well, it's new. You get a preview of the tools and tricks you'll soon be able to use. You can in effect look over the software designers' shoulders and see what problems they're trying to solve. But here is what I have learned over the last ten weeks, through the worst experience of my 25+ years of using personal computers: be very, very afraid of beta software for any functions you need for actual work. As mentioned earlier, the disaster involved the upcoming releases of Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Vista.

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Has Bush been smart all along?

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Maybe it's just because the event happened between 2am and 3am China time. But I listened with mounting amazement to President Bush's post-election press conference on Wednesday. It was not simply the tone of relative reasonableness and contrition -- or as close to it as we've ever heard in public from this man -- that was so surprising. Contrition? What the transcript renders as "It was a thumping," and what was actually delivered as "It was a thumpin'," was more frank-sounding than anything the President has ever said about, well, Iraq. The amazing aspect was that this man sounded smart.

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Has Bush Been Smart All Along?

Magazine November 2006

James Fallows marvels at a side of President Bush we haven't previously seen

Proud to Be an American, Chapter 12,745

Magazine November 2006

Life is about to become dramatically more pleasant, positive, and effective for Americans in their dealings with every other part of the world.

Proud to be an American, chapter 12,745

Technology
Election Day 2006 was a very good day for American democracy, for obvious reasons: it showed that dozens of Congressional districts could in fact be "in play" despite the well-known excesses of gerrymandering, and it was long-sought proof that there is, finally, some accountability for gross failures of judgment, execution, competence, and vision. After running two gubernatorial campaigns in Texas and one presidential campaign (his first) on themes of accountability, responsibility, and facing up to mistakes, George W. Bush has imposed almost none of it on his administration. Two word proof: Donald Rumsfeld. (Don't remember the "accountability" theme? It was how he polished off Ann Richards in their first debate back in 1994, as described here.) Also: to be free at last of the phrase, "the genius of Karl Rove." Not to mention, "the Republican ground game." Hallelujah. And: to know that however the Virginia recount turns out, George Allen is never going to be a presidential nominee. Here is a less obvious reason that it matters: Life is about to become dramatically more pleasant, positive, and effective for Americans in their dealings with every other part of the world.

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What's wrong with travel, part 973

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What I crammed into my carry on bag on my recent slog from China to America and back: Test Everyone recognizes the gear:

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James Fallows
from the Magazine

Mars, Our First Outpost on the Final Frontier

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

The Skeptic’s Guide to the South Pacific

How I learned to stop worrying and love vacation

The Places You’ll Go

Google’s Michael Jones talks with James Fallows about the future of mapping, and why…