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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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Tonight's aviation-mishap report

By James Fallows

Feb 9 2010, 8:49 PM ET

I have not yet seen, but I heard many admiring previews of, a PBS Frontline show tonight (just minutes from now, on the East Coast) about last year's Colgan crash in Buffalo and the related problems of low-budget regional airlines. If you miss it, as I will in real time today, it will be available online starting tomorrow here. It is narrated by Miles O'Brien, known to the world as a long-time CNN figure and to me as a fellow pilot of Cirrus airplanes.

On the more positive side of recent aviation news, in case you have not yet heard enough about "Captain Sully" and the remarkable safe landing last summer of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson, this site, by Exosphere3D in Denver, has some equally remarkable recreations of the event. My favorite is the one below (best viewed in full-screen), matching all the comment of all the controllers involved with a moving map of the plane, birds, etc. But there are lots more at the site:


Reader Michael Stoogenke, a geospatial analyst (who is not part of Exosphere3D), says this about the representations:
"Given the sophistication of the simulation, it's easy to overlook an important point -- the level of detail in the background mapping is very sophisticated. ExoSphere3D probably acquired the maps, aerial photos, and 3D buildings in the public domain or for relatively low cost. This type of thing would not have been possible 10 years ago (3-5 years for the 3D buildings). If the crash occurred between 2000 and 2007, ExoSphere3D  would have had to dole out thousands of dollars to obtain this level of detail in their sims. In the age of Google Earth, we now take this for granted. Indeed, we've come to expect it."


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