James Fallows is based in Washington, D.C. as a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He has worked for the magazine since the late 1970s, 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 University, and received a graduate degree in economics from Oxford University 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 U.S. 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 for the United States 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. Two of his most recent books, Blind Into Baghdad (Vintage, 2006) and Postcards From Tomorrow Square (Vintage, 2009), are based on his writings for The Atlantic. His book is China Airborne (Pantheon, 2012). He is married to Deborah Fallows, author of the book Dreaming in Chinese (Walker & Company, 2011).
