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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, was published in early 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. 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.
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Update on the "thought experiment" state map

By James Fallows

Jan 25 2010, 3:09 PM ET

The wonderful imaginary map from FakeIsTheNewReal, showing how state boundaries might look if they were drawn to have more or less equal population (while retaining as much coherence as possible), that I mentioned two days ago here is up now in a new version. The site is the same, but some of the borders have been tweaked, the names of some new "states" have been changed, and the colors are a little different. For instance, "Rocky Mountain High" has become "Bitterroot," and "Washlaska" has become "Olympia." Compare-and-contrast versions below; in each case, click for larger.

Previous version:
reform_gis_main_map_800.jpg

Current version:
electoralreform_map_800.jpg



I mention this because I have gotten some puzzled (and two huffy/accusatory) messages from people asking why I "altered" the state names and layouts from what is on the FakeIs.. site. Hey, I'm just a neutral reporter! The thing changed when I wasn't looking! Both versions, by Neil Freeman, are very nice and a public service.


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