James R. Gaines (born August 11, 1947) is an American journalist and historian, the author of several books and the former managing editor of Time, Life, and People magazines.
In 2007 he became the editor-in-chief of FLYP,[4] a biweekly multimedia publication online that produced interactive material for the web sites of Fortune, Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly, Scientific American and ProPublica.
[6] He is the author of For Liberty and Glory: Washington, Lafayette and Their Revolutions (W. W. Norton, 2007);[7] Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment (HarperCollins, 2005);[8] and Wit’s End: Days and Nights of the Algonquin Round Table (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977).
[9] Gaines began his career at Saturday Review, before moving on to Newsweek, where he was a National Affairs writer.
A graduate of the University of Michigan, Gaines is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Historical Association, the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the Overseas Press Club, and the Online News Association.