Charles Fishman’s latest feature in The Atlantic examines the potential return of American manufacturing from China. Here’s a few bullet points that sum up Fishman’s fantastic article:

• More factory jobs are returning to the United States—probably to stay.
• Not only can you make dishwashers (and other appliances) better in America than you can in China or Mexico—but companies are beginning to find ways to make them cheaper at home.
• The outsourcing “boom” didn’t save companies money. There was a notion that chasing the lowest cost and sending manufacturing overseas would help to cut down on production costs, but as Fishman says, “they didn’t do the math right, and they didn’t save money.”
• Factories are, really, research and development labs. By bringing factory work back to America it means that, over time, companies can learn how to improve their products. When you construct something day in and day out, you learn all about the product and can then learn how to make the product better in terms of efficiency in construction and usefulness for the consumer.

Here’s The Atlantic’s James Fallows, documenting his recent trip through one of China’s Foxconn factories. His feature story in this month’s issue examines the possible return of American manufacturing from a decade of Chinese dominance.

The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates, on why the Republicans need to do more than just “appeal” to Democratic voters, in The Chicago Tribune.

In a recent article in The Atlantic, health speaker and Overtreated author Shannon Brownlee discusses how increased patient input on treatment options could help alleviate stresses in our healthcare system. “Patients only hear about one treatment option, the one the doctor usually uses—and doctors routinely assume they know what their patients want without actually asking them,” she wrote, “and in many cases, the doctor is wrong.”

Why? Because “patients… tend to choose less invasive (and therefore less expensive) treatment options,” when there is no clear-cut best option. The result, as Brownlee says in her book Overtreated, is a system that “reward[s] doing more, rather than doing good.”

In this month’s Atlantic, all three cover bylines belong to Lavin speakers: James Fallows on Romney, the debater; Ta-Nehisi Coates on how Obama has addressed race (or hasn’t) during his first term; and Hanna Rosin on hookup culture & feminist progress.

Lavin speaker Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, writing about why violence doesn’t work in The Atlantic.

Lavin speaker James Fallows has just released his second book on China, China Airborne, and the reviews are overwhelmingly positive. Here’s one:

“On the surface it is a book about aviation in China, but it is also one of the best books on China (ever), one of the best books on industrial organization in years, and an excellent treatment of economic growth.  It is also readable and fun.”

Lavin speaker Gayle Tzemach Lemmon (The Dressmaker of Khair Khana), in a powerful piece for The Atlantic, “In Praise of Single Moms.”

From The Atlantic article “What’s Wrong With the Phrase ‘In Real Life’”:

“In the video below, Canadian social-media theorist Alexandra Samuel calls on us to give up this idea that what happens online is not “real.” Rather, she says, “When you’re online, you’re often more real, more authentic, than you would be offline.” If we take our online lives more seriously, and recognize that other people online are real too, we can build a more empathetic, thoughtful, and interesting Internet, she says.”

Margaret Atwood’s latest, In Other Worlds: SF And The Human Imagination made The Atlantic’s list of 24 books to look forward to this fall.

From The Atlantic: 

The Booker Prize-winning novelist latest book focuses on her relationship with science fiction. Based on a set of lectures Atwood gave at Emory University, In Other Worlds traces her engagement with the genre, beginning in childhood, through her time in graduate school, and continuing with her work as a writer of fiction, which includes elements of science fiction.

Release date: October 11