Bio
James Mann is a Washington-based author who has written a series of award-winning books about American foreign policy and about China. For a profile of Mann and his work, click this link to The Washington Post.
He is a former newspaper reporter, foreign correspondent and columnist who wrote for more than twenty years for the Los Angeles Times. He is now an author-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
Mann’s best-known book is Rise of the Vulcans: A History of Bush’s War Cabinet. Published in 2004, the book became a New York Times best-seller. Historian Walter Russell Mead called it “the best study yet of the Bush-Cheney foreign policy team.”
The pathbreaking book served as the primary source for accounts about the careers and ideas of Vice President Cheney and his associates. For example, Jane Mayer’s book, The Dark Side, opens with two pages of information from Rise of the Vulcans.
Mann has also written three books about America’s relationship with China. The first, Beijing Jeep (1989, 1997), is the story of a single American company and its frustrations starting to do business in China. The second, About Face (1998), is a history of America’s diplomacy with China, starting at the time of Richard Nixon’s opening. The third, The China Fantasy (2006), is a critique of the idea that trade will lead to democracy in China.
From 1968 to 2001, before become a full-time author, Mann worked as a reporter or columnist for several newspapers: The New Haven Journal Courier, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.
He was awarded the Edward Weintal Prize in 1999 for distinguished coverage of foreign policy, and he also was a two-time winner of the Edwin M. Hood Award for diplomatic reporting.
Mann has also been a contributor to National Public Radio and to several magazines, including The Atlantic, The New Republic and The American Prospect. A 1992 article in The Atlantic, “Deep Throat: An Institutional Analysis,” was widely credited as having been the first to explain the hidden dynamics that led the FBI’s Mark Felt to leak information about Watergate. The article was included in the book The American Idea: The Best of the Atlantic Monthly, a collection of the magazine’s best articles from the past 150 years.
Mann was born in Albany, New York, and graduated from Harvard College. He lives in the Washington, D.C., area with his wife Caroline Dexter, who teaches classics at Howard University. He has a daughter, Elizabeth Mann, and a son, Ted Mann.
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Op-eds & Newspaper articles
New York Times:
- “At the White House, What’s Old May Be New,” Jan. 24, 2009
- “Tear Down That Myth,” June 10, 2007
- Bush and Kissinger: “The Ghost in the Oval Office,” October 5, 2006
Washington Post:
- “What Will the Pillars of His Foreign Policy Be?” June 13, 2008
- “A Shining Model of Wealth Without Liberty,” May 18, 2007
- “Understanding Gates,” Nov. 9, 2006
The American Prospect:
- “Not Your Father’s Foreign Policy,” April 8, 2001