Bio

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James Mann is a Washington-based author who has written a series of award-winning books about American foreign policy and about China. 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 work is Rise of the Vulcans: A History of Bush’s War Cabinet. Published in 2004, the book became a New York Timesbest-seller. The Wall Street Journal called it “a work of serious intellectual history and a nuanced analysis of the debates that will continue to shape American foreign policy long after the Vulcans themselves have left the stage.” New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani called it “compelling…lucid, shrewd and …blessedly level-headed.” 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 from Rise of the Vulcans.   Another of Mann’s books is The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan, which reexamines the role Ronald Reagan played in the end of the Cold War. The book won the 2010 Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union of the United States.

Mann, a former Beijing correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, has also written three books about America’s relationship with China. The first, Beijing Jeep, is the story of a single American company and its frustrations starting to do business in China. Fortune magazine book placed the book on its list of 75 all-time greatest books for business executives to read. The second, About Face: A History of America’s Curious Relationship with China, From Nixon to Clinton, narrates the history of America’s diplomacy with China, starting in the late 1960s. The book won the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein award for best book of the year (2000). The third book, The China Fantasy, is a critique of the notion that trade will lead to democracy in China. It was listed by The Washington Post’s Book World as one of the best books of the year (2007).

Before become a full-time author, Mann worked for more than three decades as a newspaper reporter, foreign correspondent and columnist. In his early twenties, he was a metro reporter for the Washington Post, where he worked on some of the early Watergate stories (the Nixon campaign issued a subpoena for Mann, along with Post publisher Katherine Graham and reporters Bob Woodward, to testify about Watergate coverage). From 1978 to 2001 Mann wrote for the Los Angeles Times, where he served as Supreme Court correspondent, Beijing bureau chief, diplomatic correspondent and foreign affairs columnist. His work was awarded the Edward Weintal Prize in 1999 for distinguished career-long 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, The New York Review of Books 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 Washington, D.C. with his wife Caroline Dexter, who teaches classics at Howard University. He has a daughter, Elizabeth Mann, and a son, Ted Mann.

 

For a video of Mann and his career, from an interview at the University of California (Berkeley), see

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people5/JMann/jmann-con0.html

Magazine article on Watergate and Deep Throat in Atlantic magazine:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199205/mann

Miscellaneous Op-Eds,, Newspaper Pieces and Magazine Articles

New York Times:

“Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Team Is Built to Fail,” Dec. 17, 2016
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/17/opinion/sunday/donald-trumps-foreign-policy-team-built-to-fail.html

“America’s Dangerous China Fantasy,”Oct. 28, 2016
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/opinion/americas-dangerous-china-fantasy.htm

“Obama Isn’t Finished Yet,” Sept.23, 2014
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/opinion/obama-isnt-finished-yet.html

“At the White House, What’s Old May Be New,” Jan. 24, 2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/opinion/25mann.html?scp=24&sq=%22james%20mann%22&st=cse

“Tear Down That Myth,” New York Times, June 10, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/opinion/10mann.html?scp=14&sq=%22james%20mann%22&st=cse

Bush and Kissinger: “The Ghost in the Oval Office”: October 5, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/opinion/05mann.html?_r=1&scp=12&sq=%22james%20mann%22&st=cse

Washington Post:

“The Speech Richard Nixon Would Have Given In the Event of a Moon Disaster,” July 12, 2019
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/07/12/speech-richard-nixon-would-have-given-event-moon-disaster/

“The Dick Cheney of ‘Vice’ Just Craves Power; The Reality Was Worse,” Dec. 27, 2018
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-dick-cheney-of-vice-just-craves-power-the-reality-was-worse/2018/12/27/9f8effae-09f7-11e9-88e3-989a3e456820_story.html

“America’s Painfully Outdated Approach to China,” Sept. 17, 2015
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/changing-the-rules-of-engagement/2015/09/17/d96c955a-5bd2-11e5-b38e-06883aacba64_story.html

“How Obama’s Foreign Policy Team Relates to the Vietnam War -or Doesn’t,” June 22, 2012
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/james-mann-how-obamas-foreign-policy-team-relates-to-the-vietnam-war–or-doesnt/2012/06/22/gJQAkVWKvV_story.html

June 13, 2008: “What Will the Pillars of His Foreign Policy Be?”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/13/AR2008061301571.html

May 18, 2007: “A Shining Model of Wealth Without Liberty”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/18/AR2007051801640.html

Nov. 9, 2006: “Understanding Gates”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/09/AR2006110901774.html

The American Prospect:

“On Realism, Old and New,” Oct. 30, 2014:
https://prospect.org/world/realism-old-new-d3/

“Not Your Father’s Foreign Policy,” April 8, 2001
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=not_your_fathers_foreign_policy

The New Republic:

“Enough With the Cliches Already: The Obama Administration’s Rhetoric on Russia Is Accomplishing Nothing,” March 3, 2014:
https://newrepublic.com/article/116848/obama-administrations-rhetoric-russia-accomplishing-nothing

“Does China Have Any Friends Left in the Obama Administration?”, Aug. 26, 2010:
https://newrepublic.com/article/77229/china-us-relationship-obama-administration

The New York Review of Books:

“Bliss Was It In That Dawn to Be Alive,” Sept. 27, 2018:
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/09/27/ben-rhodes-bliss-dawn-to-be-alive/

“Damage Bigly,” Jan. 18, 2018
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/01/18/donald-trump-damage-bigly/

“The Adults In the Room,” Oct. 26, 2017
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/10/26/trump-adult-supervision/