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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.

Weirdly, I find this encouraging

By James Fallows
Feb 17 2008, 9:15 PM ET

After ten days -- or ten months, I've lost track now -- of nonstop explosion-enhanced welcome of the new Year Of The Rat and Of The Olympics, Beijing appears to have returned to work today. That's what I judge from the jammed roads this morning, and the jammed sidewalks this past weekend, full of people carrying suitcases as they come back to town.

And it's what I judge from the air. It's been quite nice these last ten days. But this morning, at 10am, we have:

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r96/jfallows/IMG_5086.jpg

In the short run, plenty discouraging! So what's the good news here? If closing down China's factories and cars for even two weeks made a noticeable difference, maybe there is some hope that the widely-expected months-long closedown before the Olympics will do the trick. Especially if the famous Chinese weather-modification teams can arrange for some of the gelid Siberian blasts that have roared through the city in the past, blue-sky week to reappear in August. Just a thought...

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