The Lavin Agency Speakers Bureau
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writers, and doers for speaking engagements.
Deborah Fallows
Firsthand stories of America’s strength, ingenuity and grassroots growth.
Co-author of Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America
Lavin Exclusive Speaker
Writer Deborah Fallows has turned her careful observations and beautiful prose to the small towns and industries that shape the United States. In her New York Times bestseller Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America, Fallows documents a five-year journey across the country, profiling the grassroots re-invention rarely covered in the mainstream media.
“Our Towns will become a classic…the landscape unfurls beneath us; the language of different regions echoes in our ears. Most important, this book is a tonic for what ails us as a nation, a captivating story of energy and renewal across the land.”— Anne-Marie Slaughter, President & CEO, New America
Our Towns is already a national bestseller and getting rave reviews: “an eye-opening, keenly optimistic reminder of the strength of America’s vital center,” says Publishers Weekly. “An illuminating trip through parts of the country generally missed by the media spotlight … writing with lively curiosity and open minds, the couple have created a well-reported, optimistic portrait of America’s future.” (Kirkus Reviews). The America that Deb and James Fallows spent five years reporting on is one on the verge of reinvention, and the keynotes they share are uplifting, fascinating portraits of the country’s strong backbone.
Fallows sharpened her reporting stills while writing Dreaming in Chinese, a book O Magazine called “captivating.” Her approach to studying China allowed her to understand many of the idiosyncrasies that confound the West when interacting with the Chinese. As the New York Times Sunday Book Review says, “Fallows presents the common Chinese viewpoint,” adding that she “sticks to her own experiences and observations, which make her book all the more valuable.”
A Harvard graduate with a PhD in Linguistics, Fallows is also the author of A Mother’s Work, which deals with child-rearing in the working-mom age. She most recently worked in research and polling for the Pew Internet Project. Fallows’s writing on women, education, work, and travel has appeared in, among others, The Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic, and Newsweek.
Speech Topics
Civic EngagementRead more
It’s Happening HereAmerican Renewal, Ingenuity, and Innovation
Today’s dominant political refrain is that America is in a state of decline. But to author and linguist Deborah Fallows nothing could be further from the truth. Over the course of a five-year journey across the country, she (along with her husband, journalist James Fallows) discovered many surprising points of reinvention, in every region of the country—and enough to refresh the bleak...
Politics & SocietyRead more
Think Like the Chinese ThinkUnderstanding the Culture of Modern China Through the Lens of Language
Using her experience as a trained linguist and a new student of Chinese, Deborah Fallows shows how simple words, phrases, or bits of the grammar of the Chinese language can become windows to understanding much of the Chinese culture—their sense of romance, humor, protocol, personal relationships, and interest in foreigners, to name a few. Why, for example, does abrupt language in Chi...
Politics & SocietyRead more
Absorbing InclusionAmerican Universities and an Increasingly International Student Body
American universities welcome international students for their different perspective and experience. Today, with growing numbers and nationalities of foreign students, campus dynamics are rapidly shifting. The new, young melting pot brings both advantages and challenges. What does it mean, for example, that there are suddenly 100,000 Chinese students, who have grown up with a largely pop-cultur...
Corporate CultureRead more
Understanding China for BusinessesExploring the Critical (Human) Aspects and Social Dynamics
As Western companies and their leaders think about how to do business with China, they know that part of their success depends on crucial but elusive “soft” cultural issues that are always in play. What aspects of the culture are critical to the work and social dynamic between Americans and their Chinese colleagues and competitors? How can Americans look for and interpret similarities or d...
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