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James Fallows

James Fallows - James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States, and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. His latest book, China Airborne, will be published in May.
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James Fallows is based in Washington as a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He has worked for the magazine for nearly 30 years and in that time has also lived in Seattle, Berkeley, Austin, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, and Beijing. He was raised in Redlands, California, received his undergraduate degree in American history and literature from Harvard, and received a graduate degree in economics from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. In addition to working for The Atlantic, he has spent two years as chief White House speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, two years as the editor of US News & World Report, and six months as a program designer at Microsoft. He is an instrument-rated private pilot. He is also now the chair in U.S. media at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, in Australia.

Fallows has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award five times and has won once; he has also won the American Book Award for nonfiction and a N.Y. Emmy award for the documentary series Doing Business in China. He was the founding chairman of the New America Foundation. His two most recent books, Blind Into Baghdad (2006) and Postcards From Tomorrow Square (2009), are based on his writings for The Atlantic; he is at work on another book about China. He is married to Deborah Fallows, author of the recent book Dreaming in Chinese. They have two married sons.

Fallows welcomes and frequently quotes from reader mail sent via the "Email" button below. Unless you specify otherwise, we consider any incoming mail available for possible quotation -- but not with the sender's real name unless you explicitly state that it may be used. If you are wondering why Fallows does not use a "Comments" field below his posts, please see previous explanations here and here.
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Aviation beat: the Eclipse investigation

By James Fallows

Sep 19 2008, 12:30 AM ET

I mentioned one month ago that a friend in the FAA had warned me in 2006 that there was something funny in the way that Eclipse Aviation, pioneer of the very light, very cheap small-jet movement, had just gotten rush FAA certification for its breakthrough EA-500 jet.
 
Now a Congressional inquiry into the approval process is underway. Being still mainly off-grid, I am not able right now to go through the ins and outs of the arguments. But this report from Mary Grady of AVweb contains links to all the essential documents --the FAA Inspector General's statement, streaming video of the latest Congressional committee hearing, and much more. And here is Eclipse's statement on the topic.

Until I learn more, I am agnostic on the merits of this inquiry. Updates later, but for now here are the links for those who would like to inquire themselves.



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