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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.
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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.

Maybe Nov 3 is out too?

By James Fallows
Nov 5 2007, 7:28 PM ET

Only days ago I was bragging about how crisp, clear, beautiful, and blue the Beijing skies were on the first three days of November: Thursday the 1st through Saturday the 3rd. Maybe November should be Olympic month?

Then it turned out that, by November 4th and 5th, things weren't looking so great any more. Maybe the 1st through 3rd as a concentrated Olympic schedule?

Now I find a report from an American who actually went for a run on that same blue-sky Saturday, Nov 3 afternoon that had raised my spirits -- only to be laid up as if with a sudden case of emphysema. As a reminder, here is how it looked that day:http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r96/jfallows/IMG_4095.jpg

And here is what it was like to go for a run:

Well, apparently poor air quality doesn't begin to engulf your lungs until they are stressed... With each passing step it became more painfully obvious that the air had overtaken my lungs. For perspective, it was like a having a large man press against my chest and every attempt to gasp for more air only made him heavier.


Small world dept: He was running along (a different part of ) the very same road shown in the blue-sky picture above, within an hour or so of the time I took it. Which means -- something, maybe that there is stuff in the air even when it's blue.*

So, I guess the Olympic target dates are down to Nov 1 and 2. And if you're thinking that Nov 6 might work, here is the view out the apartment window this morning, with 276 days to the Olympics:
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r96/jfallows/IMG_4127.jpg

*Small world #2: The runner is a young man named J.P. Fielder, who was with a visiting delegation from the National Association of Manufacturers. When I happened to meet him yesterday at a discussion session, he looked very much like a healthy 20-something specimen training for his next marathon, which I gather he is doing. He just won't do much more training here, I'm guessing. Thanks to Carter Wood of the NAM for posting Fielder's account.

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