Skip Navigation
James Fallows

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, will be published in 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; he is at work on another book about China. 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.

More on actually avoiding lead-covered toys

By James Fallows
Aug 19 2007, 11:55 PM ET

You learn something every day. Recently I made the off-hand comment that, short of a home metallurgy lab, families couldn't tell whether the paint on their children's toys contained too much lead.


Well, it turns out (with thanks to readers) that there are fairly cheap counterparts to the home metallurgy labs, for instance this one.


This doesn't change the main point -- people really shouldn't have to be checking toys this way after they've bought them, any more than they should have to check the drinking water for e. coli or each carton of eggs for salmonella. This is what public health departments are for. But it could be useful info for people who already have questionable products at home.



Presented by

More at The Atlantic

The GOP Primary Is Badly Wounding Mitt Romney Why a Long Primary Fight Will Hurt Mitt Romney
Picture of the Day: The Aurora Borealis From Space The Aurora Borealis From Space
Why Israel Might Believe Attacking Iran Is Worthwhile Why Israeli Leaders Might Believe Attacking Iran Is Worth the Effort
Iran War Would Cost Trillions: Will the GOP Pay More Taxes for That? Would the GOP Raise Taxes to Fund a War With Iran?
Anne Rice, 'Secret World of Arrietty': The Week Ahead in Pop Culture The Week in Pop Culture
Special Report
Election 2012 Reuters Election 2012
The destination for full politics coverage, from the primaries to the White House. Read more ›
View All Correspondents

The Biggest Story in Photos

Athens in Flames

Feb 13, 2012

Subscribe Now

SAVE 59%! 10 issues JUST $2.45 PER COPY

Facebook

Newsletters

Sign up to receive our free newsletters

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)

James Fallows
from the Magazine

Obama, Explained

As Barack Obama contends for a second term in office, two conflicting narratives of his presidency…

Barack Obama

Facing huge risks and holding inconclusive intel, the president makes a gutsy call to take out bin…

Hacked!

As email, documents, and almost every aspect of our professional and personal lives moves onto the…