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.

If you want to think about China this evening...

By James Fallows
Dec 8 2009, 4:25 PM ET

... the National Committee on US-China Relations, an established (and Establishment) group dedicated to "constructive engagement" between the countries, is having a live "Town Hall" session from 8-8:45pm Eastern time with Kurt Campbell, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

I mention this mainly because of the surprising scale of the undertaking. In addition to the webcast with Campbell, there will be local, live sessions in some 40 cities in the U.S. and China by a wide roster of China experts -- to choose one example, Sidney Rittenberg, in Phoenix. The full list is at the bottom of this page. Registration for webcast here. If I weren't going to be at an Atlantic meeting on a related but different topic at just that time, I'd listen in.

While I'm at it, here is one more example of the humiliating failure of Barack Obama's recent trip to Asia, which Kurt Campbell will presumably discuss. It's an item from the East Asia Forum, in England from the Australian National University in Canberra*, about some promising developments regarding North Korea in the wake of the trip. In passing it mentions my own arguments with mainstream coverage of the trip, but I cite it now because of the news and analysis there concerning North Korea. FWIW

* Brainlock episode: the author of the article, Amy King, is now at Oxford, in England; the EAF journal itself is from the ANU, in Australia -- as I knew in some corner of my brain but did not convey to my fingers while typing.


Presented by

More at The Atlantic

Third Grade Again: The Trouble With Holding Students Back The Trouble With Holding Students Back
The Fight for a Fair and Free Internet The Fight for a Fair and Free Internet
'Plug In Better': A Manifesto How to Plug In Better
The 10 Most Expensive Cities in The World (and How They Got That Way) Why Is Everything So Expensive in Zurich?
Study of the Day: How We Really Read Restaurant Menus How We Read Restaurant Menus
Special Report
Beyond the BRICs Reuters Beyond the BRICs
A look at the next big global economies—and the rise of a global middle class. Read more ›
View All Correspondents

The Biggest Story in Photos

World Press Photo Contest 2012

Feb 15, 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…