Skip Navigation
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.
More

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.

I don't quite believe this, but... (USB finale+1)

By James Fallows
Oct 21 2008, 3:38 AM ET

This really is the last chapter in the saga of the brave little USB stick. (Multi-part background here.)

To helpful friends writing in to say that it is time to give the poor thing a rest, leave it on the shelf in its treasure box, don't risk shorting out the whole laptop, and for God's sake use some of the other USB memory devices sitting around the house, I say: Thanks! Got it! Already put this plan into effect!

But before it goes away for good, this final USB achievement to note. Yesterday, one day out of its WD-40 bath, the USB stick would properly store and list files, but apparently had something wrong enough with it that it could not pass the integrity test for Windows Vista's "Ready Boost" function.

Today, it passes that test. Proof in the Vista screen shot below. The ReadyBoost cache is the next to last file listed, 4GBs in size. I won't say "USB Stick, heal thyself!," but something happened.

And as soon as that shot was taken, the plucky device was "Safely Removed" from its slot and placed in its satin-lined box, where it watches over the rest of the tech establishment. Talk about going out on top.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r96/jfallows/Oct21USBA.jpg

Presented by

More at The Atlantic

In Memphis Classrooms, the Ghost of Segregation Lingers On In Memphis Classrooms, the Ghost of Segregation Lingers On
The fEARLESSness of Jeremy Lin The Fearlessness of Jeremy Lin
Reading About Reading: How Tech is Making Us More Aware of the Ways We Read How Tech Is Making Us More Aware of the Ways We Read
A Short Animated Biography of tHOMAS Edison The Life of Thomas Edison, Animated
The Fight for a Fair and Free Internet The Struggle for a More Democratic Internet
Special Report
The Civil War National Portrait Gallery The Civil War
A 150th-anniversary commemorative issue, with Atlantic work by Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, and others. Read more ›
View All Correspondents

The Biggest Story in Photos

Valentine's Day 2012

Feb 14, 2012

Subscribe Now

SAVE 59%! 10 issues JUST $2.45 PER COPY

Facebook

Newsletters

Sign up to receive our free newsletters

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)

James Fallows
from the Magazine

Obama, Explained

As Barack Obama contends for a second term in office, two conflicting narratives of his presidency…

Barack Obama

Facing huge risks and holding inconclusive intel, the president makes a gutsy call to take out bin…

Hacked!

As email, documents, and almost every aspect of our professional and personal lives moves onto the…