James Fallows

James Fallows is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and author of the newsletter Breaking the News. He began writing for the magazine in the mid-1970s, and has written hundreds of articles for the publication since then. He is the author of 12 books. The first, National Defense, won the American Book Award in 1982 and was excerpted in The Atlantic. The most recent, Our Towns, co-written with his wife, Deborah Fallows, was based on their reporting series for The Atlantic and formed the basis of a 2021 HBO documentary. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award five times and was the winner in 2003, for his Atlantic reporting on the Iraq War. Before joining The Atlantic, he was the chief White House speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter.