James Fallows

James Fallows is the co-author (with Deborah Fallows) of Our Towns, the report of their multi-year project flying a single-engine prop plane town-to-town across America. The low-altitude vantage is the book’s method and metaphor: from 1,500 feet you see patterns invisible at ground level but detail invisible to airline passengers. In the book, James and Deb Fallows quote Henry Ford’s “whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right” line to describe a town’s willed optimism, and they invite readers to tweet about their own cities to @JamesFallows or @FallowsDeb with the tag #ThisIsMyTown — an emblem of the participatory, on-the-ground reporting that defines the project.

Context: James Fallows is an American journalist, longtime national correspondent for The Atlantic, and former chief White House speechwriter for Jimmy Carter. Our Towns (2018), co-written with his wife Deborah Fallows, grew out of their reporting flights across small and mid-sized American cities.

Where this appears

• Our Towns — co-author and pilot of the town-to-town reporting project; the book’s “1,500-foot” method is his vantage