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Developing a Make or Buy Strategy for Manufacturing Business
David Probert
The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 1997
How can a company decide where to concentrate its expertise? Why are some companies better at exploiting their strengths than others? Is there a link between the range of a company's activities and its success and profitability?
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Fair Not Flat
How to Make the Tax System Better and Simpler
Edward J. McCaffery
University of Chicago Press, 2002
Everyone knows that the current tax system is unfair. Some of the richest people in America pay no tax, while a huge share of the tax burden falls on the rest of us. A mere glance at the tax code confirms that it is far too complex, with volumes of rules that no ordinary person could possibly comprehend. What is to be done? Some conservatives have called for a so-called flat tax. But a flat tax is not necessarily a simple tax, and "flat" means "more" for most taxpayers: a rise in middle-class taxes to finance tax cuts for the rich. Is there another choice?
In clear, easy-to-understand language, Edward J. McCaffery proposes a straightforward and fair alternative. A "fair not flat" tax that is consistent and progressive would tax spending, not income and savings. And if it were collected at its lower levels through a national sales tax, most people would not have to file a return. A supplemental tax on spending for the wealthiest individuals would make the national sales tax progressive. Under McCaffery's system, a family of four would pay no tax on their first $20,000 in spending, and 15 percent on the next $60,000. Only the few families who spend more than $80,000 a year would be subject to the supplemental tax. Necessities would be taxed less than ordinary and luxury items. No one would be taxed directly on savings. The estate and gift or so-called death tax would be abolished, for the simple reason that dead people don't spend. The "fair not flat" tax would fall on heirs when and as they spend their good fortune. Perhaps best of all, most Americans would not have to fill out tax returns.

Simpler, more efficient, fairer, and more reflective of America's current social values, McCaffery's "fair not flat" tax could help get us out of the tax mess that politicians and special interests have gotten us into, improving the whole country in the process. Read Fair Not Flat to find out how.

“In Fair Not Flat, Mr. McCaffery lays out the case for a consumption tax. He does so in a reader-friendly way, presenting his argument with very few footnotes, equations or technical terms. The consumption of the book, so to speak, is not at all taxing. And its argument is well worth pondering.”—Bruce Bartlett, Wall Street Journal

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Genomes and What to Make of Them
Barry Barnes and John Dupré
University of Chicago Press, 2008
The announcement in 2003 that the Human Genome Project had completed its map of the entire human genome was heralded as a stunning scientific breakthrough: our first full picture of the basic building blocks of human life. Since then, boasts about the benefits—and warnings of the dangers—of genomics have remained front-page news, with everyone agreeing that genomics has the potential to radically alter life as we know it.

For the nonscientist, the claims and counterclaims are dizzying—what does it really mean to understand the genome? Barry Barnes and John Dupré offer an answer to that question and much more in Genomes and What to Make of Them, a clear and lively account of the genomic revolution and its promise. The book opens with a brief history of the science of genetics and genomics, from Mendel to Watson and Crick and all the way up to Craig Venter; from there the authors delve into the use of genomics in determining evolutionary paths—and what it can tell us, for example, about how far we really have come from our ape ancestors. Barnes and Dupré then consider both the power and risks of genetics, from the economic potential of plant genomes to overblown claims that certain human genes can be directly tied to such traits as intelligence or homosexuality. Ultimately, the authors argue, we are now living with a new knowledge as powerful in its way as nuclear physics­, and the stark choices that face us—between biological warfare and gene therapy, a new eugenics or a new agricultural revolution—will demand the full engagement of both scientists and citizens. 

Written in straightforward language but without denying the complexity of the issues, Genomes and What to Make of Them is both an up-to-date primer and a blueprint for the future.
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Heath Robinson
How to Make a Garden Grow
W. Heath Robinson (1872-1944) is best known for his hilarious drawings of outlandish contraptions, though his work ranged across a wide variety of topics covering many aspects of British life.
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2016

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How Not to Make a Human
Pets, Feral Children, Worms, Sky Burial, Oysters
Karl Steel
University of Minnesota Press, 2019

From pet keeping to sky burials, a posthuman and ecocritical interrogation of and challenge to human particularity in medieval texts


Mainstream medieval thought, like much of mainstream modern thought, habitually argued that because humans alone had language, reason, and immortal souls, all other life was simply theirs for the taking. But outside this scholarly consensus teemed a host of other ways to imagine the shared worlds of humans and nonhumans. How Not to Make a Human engages with these nonsystematic practices and thought to challenge both human particularity and the notion that agency, free will, and rationality are the defining characteristics of being human.

Recuperating the Middle Ages as a lost opportunity for decentering humanity, Karl Steel provides a posthuman and ecocritical interrogation of a wide range of medieval texts. Exploring such diverse topics as medieval pet keeping, stories of feral and isolated children, the ecological implications of funeral practices, and the “bare life” of oysters from a variety of disanthropic perspectives, Steel furnishes contemporary posthumanists with overlooked cultural models to challenge human and other supremacies at their roots. 

By collecting beliefs and practices outside the mainstream of medieval thought, How Not to Make a Human connects contemporary concerns with ecology, animal life, and rethinkings of what it means to be human to uncanny materials that emphasize matters of death, violence, edibility, and vulnerability. 

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How to Make a Life
A Tibetan Refugee Family and the Midwestern Woman They Adopted
Madeline Uraneck
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2018
An immigration story of crossing cultural bridges and finding family.

When Madeline Uraneck said hello to the Tibetan woman cleaning her office cubicle, she never imagined the moment would change her life. After learning that Tenzin Kalsang had left her husband and four children behind in a Tibetan refugee settlement in India to try to forge a better life for them, Madeline took on the task of helping her apply for US visas. When the family reunited in their new Midwestern home, Madeline became swept up in their lives, from homework and soccer games to family dinners and shared holiday traditions. By reaching out, she found more than she bargained for—a family who welcomed her as their own and taught her more than she offered them.

An evocative blend of immersion journalism and memoir, How to Make a Life shares the immigration story of a Tibetan refugee family who crossed real and cultural bridges to make a life in Madison, Wisconsin, with the assistance of the Midwestern woman they befriended. From tales of escaping Tibet over the Himalayas, to striking a balance between old traditions with new, to bridging divides one friendly gesture at a time, readers will expand their understanding of family, culture, and belonging.
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How to Make a Revolution
Raymond Postgate
Westholme Publishing, 2018
Written During the Ascension of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, an investigation of the Methods of Revolutionary Change
The first third of the twentieth century saw a seismic upheaval in global politics and society that still reverberates today. Communism and fascism toppled both traditional monarchies and representative democracies, while trade unions and other factions effectively challenged existing governments to adopt reforms or face crippling economic or social upheaval. Given these extraordinary events, Raymond Postgate set forth in How to Make a Revolution to objectively discuss revolutionary methods, and which tactics or strategies are the most effective. Drawing on his own idealistic experience as a young labor agitator and editor of a communist newspaper and more than fifteen years of close study of past revolutionary history and theories, the author dispassionately discusses Marxism, fascism, anarchism, and Blanquism (a doctrine within socialism), as well as syndicalism and industrial unionism. He then reviews revolutionary practice, including general strikes, financial pressure, armed revolution, and communist tactics, and ends with a prescient and frightening conclusion: without general consensus and determination, a peaceful revolution is impossible, and “if no action is taken, action of another kind will be taken for us. . . . The continuance of uncertain­ty will mean that the disillusioned will drift steadily across to a Fascist organization. Fascism means war; the character of a Fascist State is fairly well known. Once it is established, those who read, who write, who publish or who print, books like this are likely to be dead or in concentration camps.” Originally published in 1934, Postgate’s book was heralded for its clarity and scholarship. 
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How to Make a Slave and Other Essays
Walker
The Ohio State University Press, 2020
Finalist, National Book Award in Nonfiction
Winner, Massachusetts Book Award

A Book of the Year pick from Kirkus, BuzzFeed, and Literary Hub

“The essays in this collection are restless, brilliant and short.…The brevity suits not just Walker’s style but his worldview, too.…Keeping things quick gives him the freedom to move; he can alight on a truth without pinning it into place.” —Jennifer Szalai, the New York Times

For the black community, Jerald Walker asserts in How to Make a Slave, “anger is often a prelude to a joke, as there is broad understanding that the triumph over this destructive emotion lay in finding its punchline.” It is on the knife’s edge between fury and farce that the essays in this exquisite collection balance. Whether confronting the medical profession’s racial biases, considering the complicated legacy of Michael Jackson, paying homage to his writing mentor James Alan McPherson, or attempting to break free of personal and societal stereotypes, Walker elegantly blends personal revelation and cultural critique. The result is a bracing and often humorous examination by one of America’s most acclaimed essayists of what it is to grow, parent, write, and exist as a black American male. Walker refuses to lull his readers; instead his missives urge them to do better as they consider, through his eyes, how to be a good citizen, how to be a good father, how to live, and how to love.
 
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How to Make a Soul
The Wisdom of John Keats
Eric G. Wilson
Northwestern University Press, 2016

In this innovative hybrid of biography, memoir, and criticism, Eric G. Wilson describes how John Keats gave him solace during a bout of mental illness in spring 2012. While on a tour of the principal sites in Keats’s life—ranging from his London medical school to the small room in Rome where he died—Wilson discovered analogies between the poet’s troubles and his own. He was most struck by Keats’s enlivening vision of the soul.

For Keats, we don’t possess but rather make a soul. We do this by imaginatively transforming our suffering into empathy toward humans and nature alike. Tracking this idea in Keats’s tumultuous yet exhilarating life and work, Wilson struggles to envision his depression anew, desperate to overcome the apathy alienating him from his family.

How to Make a Soul offers fresh perspectives on Keats’s pragmatism, irony, comedy, ethics, and aesthetics, but is above all a lyrical celebration of those galvanizing instances when life springs into art.

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How to Make a Vaccine
An Essential Guide for COVID-19 and Beyond
John Rhodes
University of Chicago Press, 2021
Distinguished expert in vaccine development John Rhodes tells the story of the first approved COVID-19 vaccines and offers an essential, up-to-the-minute primer on how scientists discover, test, and distribute vaccines.

As the COVID-19 pandemic has affected every corner of the world, changing our relationship to our communities, to our jobs, and to each other, the most pressing question has been—when will it end? Researchers around the globe are urgently trying to answer this question by racing to test and distribute a vaccine that could end the greatest public health threat of our time.  In How to Make a Vaccine, an expert who has firsthand experience developing vaccines tells an optimistic story of how three hundred years of vaccine discovery and a century and a half of immunology research have come together at this powerful moment—and will lead to multiple COVID-19 vaccines.

Dr. John Rhodes draws on his experience as an immunologist, including working alongside a young Anthony Fauci, to unravel the mystery of how vaccines are designed, tested, and produced at scale for global deployment. Concise and accessible, this book describes in everyday language how the immune system evolved to combat infection, how viruses responded by evolving ways to evade our defenses, and how vaccines do their work. That history, and the pace of current research developments, make Rhodes hopeful that multiple vaccines will protect us. Today the complex workings of the immune system are well understood. The tools needed by biomedical scientists stand ready to be used, and more than 160 vaccine candidates have already been produced. But defeating COVID-19 won’t be the end of the story: Rhodes describes how discoveries today are also empowering scientists to combat future threats to global health, including a recent breakthrough in the development of genetic vaccines, which have never before been used in humans.

As the world prepares for a vaccine, Rhodes offers a current and informative look at the science and strategies that deliver solutions to the crisis.
 
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How to Make an Algorithm in the Microwave
Maya Salameh
University of Arkansas Press, 2022
Winner, 2022 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize

“We need a new poetry lexicon—a new way of moleculing the poem on the page, even—and Maya Salameh brings it. We need all the strange Arabic-diasporic ways we can find for being in this terrible and joyful and often frighteningly banalizing world, and Salameh’s poems are a generous find. Her writing is an unexpected cousin in the colonized and capitalism-razed city, bewildering and divining things you’ve never heard but want to learn. . . . Prepare to be stretched and delighted.”
—Mohja Kahf, from the Foreword

The divine and the digital achieve a distinct corporality in Maya Salameh’s HOW TO MAKE AN ALGORITHM IN THE MICROWAVE, winner of the 2022 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. Layering prayer with code, Salameh brings supposedly unassailable technological constructs like algorithm, recursion, and loop into conversation with the technologies of womanhood, whether liner, lipstick, or blood. Exploring the relationships we have with our devices, she speaks back to the algorithm (“a computer’s admission to blood”), which acts simultaneously as warden, confidant, and data thief.

Here Salameh boldly examines how an Arab woman survives the digitization of her body—experimenting with form to create an intimate collage of personal and neocolonial histories, fearlessly insinuating herself into the scripts that would otherwise erase her, and giving voice to the full mess of ritual.

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Make a Wish
Judy Soloway Kay
University of Michigan Press, 2005
It was love at first sight when aspiring actors Abby Nicholson and Lucas Miller met at an audition in NewYork City. After just a few months, their romance seemed destined for marriage. But will their love survive when the demands of their careers and families get in the way?

Genre: Romance
Length: about 15,000 words
Level: 4th grade
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Make the Connection
Improve Your Communication at Work and at Home
Adubato, Steve
Rutgers University Press, 2006

In this collection of compelling and practical essays, Emmy Award–winning broadcaster, newspaper columnist, and motivational speaker Steve Adubato shares concrete tips and tools that will help you connect more effectively at work, at home, under pressure, in leadership roles, and in high-tech environments. From avoiding unnecessary arguments with your spouse to coaching a valuable, yet difficult employee, Adubato’s essays delve into the key factors that motivate people to act and respond the way that they do.

You will find answers to some of the most common questions about public speaking as well as advice on overcoming its anxieties. Whether the forum is a PTA meeting or a large professional function, essays explore topics such as:

  • Why even practiced speakers sometimes experience stage fright
  • How to keep your audience awake and  interested in what you are saying

 You will learn essential skills for interacting in the workplace, including:

  • How to negotiate a good deal and still be honest and straight
  • How to keep team projects from falling apart
  • How to conduct yourself in confrontational situations, such as receiving a public insult

Drawing on examples set by public figures, including Bill Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Mario Cuomo, Martha Stewart, Jack Welch, Joe Torre, and many others, Adubato addresses the unique communication challenges that those in leadership positions face. Essays examine:

·         What ordinary people can learn from leaders in high-profile positions

·         Why so many leaders have difficulty taking responsibility and apologizing for their actions

As technology continues to provide opportunities for quicker and more visual communication, Adubato also lets you know when hi-tech bells and whistles get in the way of making a more personal and human connection. For instance, 

·         Why do we hide behind e-mail messages when we have something very difficult to say?

·         How does communication deteriorate when cell phones and e-mail are competing for our attention?

Finally, Adubato reminds us that communicating at home is no less important or any less difficult than communicating in public or at work. From contemporary challenges to age-old questions, essays explore:

·         How you can more effectively talk with your kids about war and terrorism

·         What forms of persuasion are more effective than nagging

Filled with timely examples and practical suggestions, Make the Connection is a must-read for everyone looking to improve their professional and personal relationships.

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Notes to Make the Sound Come Right
Four Innovators of Jazz Poetry
T.J. Anderson III
University of Arkansas Press, 2004
In “When Malindy Sings” the great African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar writes about the power of African American music, the “notes to make the sound come right.” In this book T. J. Anderson III, son of the brilliant composer, Thomas Anderson Jr., asserts that jazz became in the twentieth century not only a way of revising old musical forms, such as the spiritual and work song, but also a way of examining the African American social and cultural experience. He traces the growing history of jazz poetry and examines the work of four innovative and critically acclaimed African American poets whose work is informed by a jazz aesthetic: Stephen Jonas (1925?–1970) and the unjustly overlooked Bob Kaufman (1925–1986), who have affinities with Beat poetry; Jayne Cortez (1936– ), whose work is rooted in surrealism; and the difficult and demanding Nathaniel Mackey (1947– ), who has links to the language writers. Each fashioned a significant and vibrant body of work that employs several of the key elements of jazz. Anderson shows that through their use of complex musical and narrative weaves these poets incorporate both the tonal and performative structures of jazz and create work that articulates the African journey. From improvisation to polyrhythm, they crafted a unique poetics that expresses a profound debt to African American culture, one that highlights the crucial connection between music and literary production and links them to such contemporary writers as Michael Harper, Amiri Baraka, and Yusef Komunyakaa, as well as young recording artists—United Future Organization, Us3, and Groove Collection—who have successfully merged hip-hop poetry and jazz.
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On the Make
The Hustle of Urban Nightlife
David Grazian
University of Chicago Press, 2007

David Grazian’s riveting tour of downtown Philadelphia and its newly bustling nightlife scene reveals the city as an urban playground where everyone dabbles in games of chance and perpetrates elaborate cons. Entertainment in the city has evolved into a professional industry replete with set designers, stage directors, and method actors whose dazzling illusions tempt even the shrewdest of customers. As entertaining and illuminating as the confessional stories it recounts, On the Make is a fascinating exposé of the smoke and mirrors employed in the city at night.

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To Make a Nation
The Rediscovery of American Federalism
Samuel H. Beer
Harvard University Press, 1993

Lyndon Johnson heralded a “new federalism,” as did Ronald Reagan. It was left to the public to puzzle out what such a proclamation, coming from both ends of the political spectrum, could possibly mean. Of one thing we can be certain: theories of federalism, in whatever form they take, are still shaping our nation. The origin of these theories—what they meant to history and how they apply today—becomes clear in this book by one of our most distinguished writers on political thought.

The great English republicans of the seventeenth century appear in this story along with their American descendants, who took the European idea of a federal republic and recast it as new and unique. Samuel Beer’s extraordinary knowledge of European political thought, displayed especially in discussions of Thomas Aquinas and James Harrington, allows him to show at every turn the historical precedents and the originality of American federalism in theory and practice. In deft comparisons with Hume, Burke, Blackstone, and Montesquieu, the familiar figures of Madison and Hamilton emerge with new substance and depth, while some who would seem fully known by now, such as Ben Franklin, reveal unsuspected dimensions, and others, such as James Wilson, are lifted from obscurity.

Beer uses this history to highlight the contrast between the nation-centered federalism of the framers of the Constitution and the state-centered federalism of its opponents. His concern is not only with historical origins but, more important, with a conflict of ideas which reaches far into our history and continues on to this day. The result is the clearest articulation ever given of the provenance and purpose of the ideas of nationalism and federalism in American political philosophy. A masterpiece of historical and political analysis, this book provides an innovative interpretive framework for understanding democracy and the American Constitution.

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To Make a Prairie
Essays on Poets, Poetry, and Country Living
Maxine Kumin
University of Michigan Press, 1980
Kumin reflects on the process of writing poetry and on life in the country
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To Make a World Safe for Revolution
Cuba’s Foreign Policy
Jorge I. Domínguez
Harvard University Press, 1989

The twentieth-century history of Cuba borders on fantasy. This diminutive country boldly and repeatedly exercises the foreign policy of a major power. Although closely tied to the United States through most of its modern history, Cuba successfully defied the U.S. government after 1959, consolidated its own power, and defeated an invasion of U.S.-backed exiles at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Fidel Castro then brought the world alarmingly close to nuclear war in 1962.

Jorge Domínguez presents a comprehensive survey of Cuban international relations since Castro came to power. Domínguez unravels Cuba’s response to the 1962 missile crisis and the U.S.–Soviet understandings that emerged from that. He explores the ties that link Cuba to the U.S.S.R. and other Communist countries; analyzes Cuban support for revolutionary movements throughout the world, especially in Latin America and Africa; and assesses the significance of Cuban political and economic relations with Western Europe, Canada, and Japan.

Some have charged that Cuba does not have a foreign policy, that Fidel Castro merely takes orders from his Soviet bosses. Domínguez argues that there is indeed a specifically Cuban foreign policy, poised not only between hegemony and autonomy, between compliance and self-assertion, but also between militancy and pragmatism. He believes that within the context of Soviet hegemony Cuba’s foreign policy is very much its own, and he marshals impressive evidence to support this belief. His book is based on extensive documentation from Cuba, the United States, and other countries, as well as from many in-depth interviews carried out during trips to Cuba.

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To Make the Earth Bear Fruit
Ethnographic Essays on Fertility, Work and Gender in Highland Bolivia
Olivia Harris
University of London Press, 1999

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What Would It Take to Make an Ed School Great?
Voices from an Unfinished Revolution
John Schwille
Michigan State University Press, 2023
This book brings new life to the long-standing debate in the United States over whether teacher education, K–12 teaching, and the role that universities play in this work can be revolutionized so that they are less subject to self-defeating conventions and orthodoxy, to the benefit of all the nation’s children. Author John Schwille reexamines the ambitious reform agenda that Michigan State University teacher education leaders brought to the national table in the 1980s and 1990s. This attempted revolution mobilized unprecedented resources to the struggle to transform teaching and learning of subject matter. Conveying this history through the words of the teachers and scholars responsible for it, Schwille shows that a great deal was achieved, but many of the lessons learned continue to be ignored.
 
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Words Matter
Writing to Make a Difference
Edited by Amanda Dahling and Mary Kay Blakely
University of Missouri Press, 2016

Newspapers and magazines have been steadily shrinking, and more and more former subscribers have gone to digital and internet sources for the news. Yet it has become increasingly clear that “short takes” don’t satisfy many readers, who still long for nuanced, long form journalism. By providing examples of classic magazine articles by professional writers, all of whom are graduates of the Missouri School of Journalism, this book fulfills the need for more sophisticated, thought-provoking essays that will resonate with both the general reader and students.

The book is divided into three broad categories: profiles, first person journalism, and personal memoirs, and includes the original articles as well as a “postscript” by the writers in which they discuss what they’ve learned about writing, journalism, and the business of getting published. Useful for students and instructors in writing programs, the book also appeals to writers interested in both the art and the craft of successful writing.

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