“The University of Puget Sound’s International Political Economy Program is presenting two lectures featuring James Fallows, a national author, editor and commentator, and Eamonn Fingleton, an international author and journalist.Fallows will present, “Setting Sun? Reflections on the Asian Crisis,” on Thursday, November 18. Fingleton will present, “In Praise of Hard Industries: Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, is the Key to Prosperity,” on Wednesday, November 17.Fallows will discuss the conclusions of his book, “Looking at the Sun: the Rise of the New Asian Economic and Political system,” in light of the Asian economic crisis. Fallows has served as The Atlantic Monthly’s Washington editor from 1980 to 11996, and is now a contributing editor to the magazine and a columnist for Slate.com, an online magazine.Fallows attended Harvard and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1970. He then studied economics at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He has been an editor of The Washington Monthly and of Texas Monthly, and served as President Jimmy Carter’s chief speechwriter from 1977 through 1979. From 1996 through 1998 he was editor of U.S. News & World Report.Fingleton is a former editor for the Financial Times and Forbes. His book, “Blindside: Why Japan Is Still on Track to Overtake the U.S. by the Year 2000,” was chosen as one of Business Week’s ten best business books of 1995.Fingleton’s commentaries on Japanese economics and business have been published in numerous magazines and newspapers.Both lectures are free of charge and open to the public. Both begin at 4:00 p.m. in the Wheelock Student Center on the University of Puget Sound campus, 1500 North Warner Street. The Fallows lecture will be in the Rasmussen Rotunda and the Fingleton lecture will be in the Murray Board Room.”