About

Ed Flattau was born in New York City and graduated from Brown University in 1958. He left Columbia Law School after two years to begin his journalist career as a general assignment reporter in the Albany, N.Y. United Press International Bureau. In 1964, he became a political correspondent for UPI in New York State where he covered the legislature and Governor Rockefeller. Three years later, he transferred to UPI’s Washington bureau where his beat included congress, various federal agencies and on occasion, the White House. In the spring of 1972, Stewart Udall, former interior secretary under President Kennedy, was impressed enough with Flattau’s freelance environmental writing to choose Ed to succeed him as author of the country’s first nationally syndicated environmental column. Flattau is the author of Tracking the Charlatans (Global Horizons Press, 1998), which received excellent reviews and has been widely circulated in environmental and academic circles. The book rebuts ultra-conservative and Libertarian critics of mainstream environmentalism. His second book, Evolution of a Columnist, was published in 2003 and also garnered excellent reviews. In 2004, his third book, Peering Through the Bushes, a cutting critique of George W Bush’s environmental record, was published and accurately anticipated the President’s future actions.

The Washington-based Flattau’s column has appeared in as many as 120 daily newspapers at various times during the past three decades. He has won ten national journalism awards, reported from five different continents, and covered the key issues and principle figures associated with modern day environmentalism. Flattau is married and the father of two children. He has lived in the nation’s capital for the past 40 years.