395 books match the query 'How' and 66 start with t

cover of The Subversive Copy Editor, Second Edition: Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself)

The Subversive Copy Editor, Second Edition

Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself)

Carol Fisher Saller

University of Chicago Press, 2016

Longtime manuscript editor and Chicago Manual of Style guru Carol Fisher Saller has negotiated many a standoff between a writer and editor refusing to compromise on the “rights” and “wrongs” of prose styling. Saller realized that when these sides squared off, it was often the reader who lost. In her search for practical strategies for keeping the peace, The Subversive Copy Editor was born. Saller’s ideas struck a chord, and the little book with big advice quickly became a must-have reference for copy editors everywhere.

In this second edition, Saller adds new chapters, on the dangers of allegiance to outdated grammar and style rules and on ways to stay current in language and technology. She expands her advice for writers on formatting manuscripts for publication, on self-editing, and on how not to be “difficult.” Saller’s own gaffes provide firsthand (and sometimes humorous) examples of exactly what not to do. The revised content reflects today’s publishing practices while retaining the self-deprecating tone and sharp humor that helped make the first edition so popular. Saller maintains that through carefulness, transparency, and flexibility, editors can build trust and cooperation with writers.

The Subversive Copy Editor brings a refreshingly levelheaded approach to the classic battle between writers and editors. This sage advice will prove useful and entertaining to anyone charged with the sometimes perilous task of improving the writing of others.
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cover of The Subversive Copy Editor: Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself)

The Subversive Copy Editor

Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself)

Carol Fisher Saller

University of Chicago Press, 2009

Each year writers and editors submit over three thousand grammar and style questions to the Q&A page at The Chicago Manual of Style Online. Some are arcane, some simply hilarious—and one editor, Carol Fisher Saller, reads every single one of them. All too often she notes a classic author-editor standoff, wherein both parties refuse to compromise on the "rights" and "wrongs" of prose styling: "This author is giving me a fit." "I wish that I could just DEMAND the use of the serial comma at all times." "My author wants his preface to come at the end of the book. This just seems ridiculous to me. I mean, it’s not a post-face."

In The Subversive Copy Editor, Saller casts aside this adversarial view and suggests new strategies for keeping the peace. Emphasizing habits of carefulness, transparency, and flexibility, she shows copy editors how to build an environment of trust and cooperation. One chapter takes on the difficult author; another speaks to writers themselves. Throughout, the focus is on serving the reader, even if it means breaking "rules" along the way. Saller’s own foibles and misadventures provide ample material: "I mess up all the time," she confesses. "It’s how I know things."

Writers, Saller acknowledges, are only half the challenge, as copy editors can also make trouble for themselves. (Does any other book have an index entry that says "terrorists. See copy editors"?) The book includes helpful sections on e-mail etiquette, work-flow management, prioritizing, and organizing computer files. One chapter even addresses the special concerns of freelance editors.

Saller’s emphasis on negotiation and flexibility will surprise many copy editors who have absorbed, along with the dos and don’ts of their stylebooks, an attitude that their way is the right way. In encouraging copy editors to banish their ignorance and disorganization, insecurities and compulsions, the Chicago Q&A presents itself as a kind of alter ego to the comparatively staid Manual of Style. In The Subversive Copy Editor, Saller continues her mission with audacity and good humor.

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cover of The Supreme Court on Trial: How the American Justice System Sacrifices Innocent Defendants

The Supreme Court on Trial

How the American Justice System Sacrifices Innocent Defendants

George C. Thomas III

University of Michigan Press, 2011

The chief mandate of the criminal justice system is not to prosecute the guilty but to safeguard the innocent from wrongful convictions; with this startling assertion, legal scholar George Thomas launches his critique of the U.S. system and its emphasis on procedure at the expense of true justice.

Thomas traces the history of jury trials, an important component of the U.S. justice system, since the American Founding. In the mid-twentieth century, when it became evident that racism and other forms of discrimination were corrupting the system, the Warren Court established procedure as the most important element of criminal justice. As a result, police, prosecutors, and judges have become more concerned about following rules than about ensuring that the defendant is indeed guilty as charged. Recent cases of prisoners convicted of crimes they didn't commit demonstrate that such procedural justice cannot substitute for substantive justice.

American justices, Thomas concludes, should take a lesson from the French, who have instituted, among other measures, the creation of an independent court to review claims of innocence based on new evidence. Similar reforms in the United States would better enable the criminal justice system to fulfill its moral and legal obligation to prevent wrongful convictions.

"Thomas draws on his extensive knowledge of the field to elaborate his elegant and important thesis---that the American system of justice has lost sight of what ought to be its central purpose---protection of the innocent."
—Susan Bandes, Distinguished Research Professor of Law, DePaul University College of Law

"Thomas explores how America's adversary system evolved into one obsessed with procedure for its own sake or in the cause of restraining government power, giving short shrift to getting only the right guy. His stunning, thought-provoking, and unexpected recommendations should be of interest to every citizen who cares about justice."
—Andrew E. Taslitz, Professor of Law, Howard University School of Law

"An unflinching, insightful, and powerful critique of American criminal justice---and its deficiencies. George Thomas demonstrates once again why he is one of the nation's leading criminal procedure scholars. His knowledge of criminal law history and comparative criminal law is most impressive."
—Yale Kamisar, Distinguished Professor of Law, University of San Diego and Clarence Darrow Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Law, University of Michigan

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cover of The Testimony of Two Nations: How the Book of Mormon Reads, and Rereads, the Bible

The Testimony of Two Nations

How the Book of Mormon Reads, and Rereads, the Bible

Michael Austin

University of Illinois Press, 2024

Understanding the Book of Mormon on its own terms and through its two-way connection with the Bible

Like the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible, the Book of Mormon uses narratives to develop ideas and present instruction. Michael Austin reveals how the Book of Mormon connects itself to narratives in the Christian Bible with many of the same tools that the New Testament used to connect itself to the Hebrew Bible to create the Christian Bible. As Austin shows, the canonical context for interpreting the Book of Mormon includes the Christian Bible, the Book of Mormon itself, and other writings and revelations that hold scriptural status in most Restoration denominations. Austin pays particular attention to how the Book of Mormon connects itself to the Christian Bible both to form a new canon and to use the canonical relationship to reframe and reinterpret biblical narratives. This canonical context provides an important and fruitful method for interpreting the Book of Mormon.
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cover of The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind

The Unaccountability Machine

Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind

Dan Davies

University of Chicago Press, 2025

Longlisted for the 2024 Financial Times Book of the Year. How life and the economy became a black box—a collection of systems no one understands, producing outcomes no one likes.
 
Passengers get bumped from flights. Phone menus disconnect. Automated financial trades produce market collapse. Of all the challenges in modern life, some of the most vexing come from our relationships with automation: a large system does us wrong, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

The problem, economist Dan Davies shows, is accountability sinks: systems in which decisions are delegated to a complex rule book or set of standard procedures, making it impossible to identify the source of mistakes when they happen. In our increasingly unhuman world—lives dominated by algorithms, artificial intelligence, and large organizations—these accountability sinks produce more than just aggravation. They make life and economy unknowable—a black box for no reason.

In The Unaccountability Machine, Davies lays bare how markets, institutions, and even governments systematically generate outcomes that no one—not even those involved in making them—seems to want. Since the earliest days of the computer age, theorists have foreseen the dangers of complex systems without personal accountability. In response, British business scholar Stafford Beer developed an accountability-first approach to management called “cybernetics,” which might have taken off had his biggest client (the Chilean government) not fallen to a bloody coup in 1973.

With his signature blend of economic and journalistic rigor, Davies examines what’s gone wrong since Beer, including what might have been had the world embraced cybernetics when it had the chance. The Unaccountability Machine is a revelatory and resonant account of how modern life became predisposed to dysfunction.
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cover of The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind

The Unaccountability Machine

Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind

Dan Davies

University of Chicago Press, 2025

Longlisted for the 2024 Financial Times Book of the Year. How life and the economy became a black box—a collection of systems no one understands, producing outcomes no one likes.
 
Passengers get bumped from flights. Phone menus disconnect. Automated financial trades produce market collapse. Of all the challenges in modern life, some of the most vexing come from our relationships with automation: a large system does us wrong, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

The problem, economist Dan Davies shows, is accountability sinks: systems in which decisions are delegated to a complex rule book or set of standard procedures, making it impossible to identify the source of mistakes when they happen. In our increasingly unhuman world—lives dominated by algorithms, artificial intelligence, and large organizations—these accountability sinks produce more than just aggravation. They make life and economy unknowable—a black box for no reason.

In The Unaccountability Machine, Davies lays bare how markets, institutions, and even governments systematically generate outcomes that no one—not even those involved in making them—seems to want. Since the earliest days of the computer age, theorists have foreseen the dangers of complex systems without personal accountability. In response, British business scholar Stafford Beer developed an accountability-first approach to management called “cybernetics,” which might have taken off had his biggest client (the Chilean government) not fallen to a bloody coup in 1973.

With his signature blend of economic and journalistic rigor, Davies examines what’s gone wrong since Beer, including what might have been had the world embraced cybernetics when it had the chance. The Unaccountability Machine is a revelatory and resonant account of how modern life became predisposed to dysfunction.

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cover of The Unplanned Lesson: How to Stop Searching for Activities and Start Engaging Students

The Unplanned Lesson

How to Stop Searching for Activities and Start Engaging Students

Ian Roth and Paul Wicking

University of Michigan Press, 2023

The complexities of language education demand that teachers have the flexibility to be able to adapt their plans during lessons in order to meet the needs of their students. Yet teachers are trained to meticulously prepare lesson plans and numerous activities to keep their students engaged. This can lead to teachers feeling locked into the plan they spent time preparing. The Unplanned Lesson suggests a new paradigm for how to prepare for and conduct language lessons based on curating what the authors term “structures.” By focusing on structures that are flexible, evolvable, repeatable, and memorable, teachers can reduce the amount of time they spend planning and increase the amount of time students are engaged in deliberate practice. Designed to integrate with any syllabus or textbook, The Unplanned Lesson approach aims to allow teachers to transform their classrooms by giving them more time to focus on supporting their students’ learning. 
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cover of The Votes That Counted: How the Court Decided the 2000 Presidential Election

The Votes That Counted

How the Court Decided the 2000 Presidential Election

Howard Gillman

University of Chicago Press, 2001

The dramatic struggle over the outcome of the 2000 presidential election presented judges with an extraordinary political challenge, as well as a historic political temptation. In The Votes That Counted Howard Gillman offers a comprehensive yet critical assessment of how well courts coped with the competing expectations for impartial justice and favorable partisan results.

Lively and authoritative, the book documents how the participants, the press, the academic community, and the public responded during these tension-filled thirty-six days. Gillman also provides a serious yet accessible overview of the legal strategies and debates-from briefs and oral arguments to final decisions. However, in explaining the behavior of courts, he moves beyond an analysis of law to also take into account the influences of partisanship, judicial ideology, and broader political and historical contexts.

Appropriately, Gillman pays special attention to the judges whose behavior generated the most controversy—the battling justices of the Florida and United States Supreme Courts. After carefully reviewing the arguments for and against their decisions, he concludes that the five justices behind the Bush v. Gore decision acted outside what should be considered the acceptable boundaries of judicial power. Gillman ends with an analysis of why they chose such an unprecedented course of action and an assessment of whether their partisan intervention will have any lasting effect on the Supreme Court's reputation and authority.
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cover of The Wardian Case: How a Simple Box Moved Plants and Changed the World

The Wardian Case

How a Simple Box Moved Plants and Changed the World

Luke Keogh

University of Chicago Press, 2020

The story of a nineteenth-century invention (essentially a tiny greenhouse) that allowed for the first time the movement of plants around the world, feeding new agricultural industries, the commercial nursery trade, botanic and private gardens, invasive species, imperialism, and more.

Roses, jasmine, fuchsia, chrysanthemums, and rhododendrons bloom in gardens across the world, and yet many of the most common varieties have roots in Asia. How is this global flowering possible? In 1829, surgeon and amateur naturalist Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward placed soil, dried leaves, and the pupa of a sphinx moth into a sealed glass bottle, intending to observe the moth hatch. But when a fern and meadow grass sprouted from the soil, he accidentally discovered that plants enclosed in glass containers could survive for long periods without watering. After four years of experimentation in his London home, Ward created traveling glazed cases that would be able to transport plants around the world. Following a test run from London to Sydney, Ward was proven correct: the Wardian case was born, and the botanical makeup of the world’s flora was forever changed.
 
In our technologically advanced and globalized contemporary world, it is easy to forget that not long ago it was extremely difficult to transfer plants from place to place, as they often died from mishandling, cold weather, and ocean salt spray. In this first book on the Wardian case, Luke Keogh leads us across centuries and seas to show that Ward’s invention spurred a revolution in the movement of plants—and that many of the repercussions of that revolution are still with us, from new industries to invasive plant species. From the early days of rubber, banana, tea, and cinchona cultivation—the last used in the production of the malaria drug quinine—to the collecting of beautiful and exotic flora like orchids in the first great greenhouses of the United States Botanic Garden in Washington, DC, and England’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Wardian case transformed the world’s plant communities, fueled the commercial nursery trade and late nineteenth-century imperialism, and forever altered the global environment.
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cover of The Weekly War: How the Saturday Evening Post Reported World War I

The Weekly War

How the Saturday Evening Post Reported World War I

Chris Dubbs

University of North Texas Press, 2023

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cover of Touch of Grey, or How the Grateful Dead Became Pop Stars

Touch of Grey, or How the Grateful Dead Became Pop Stars

John Brackett

Duke University Press, 2026

Touch of Grey, or How the Grateful Dead Became Pop Stars draws on extensive archival research to tell the behind-the-scenes story of how one song fundamentally transformed the legacy of one of rock’s most iconic groups.

Touch of Grey, or How the Grateful Dead Became Pop Stars tells the story of how one song transformed the popular legacy of one of rock’s most iconic musical groups. John Brackett traces the history of the song “Touch of Grey,” beginning with songwriter Robert Hunter’s lyrical sketches and the Grateful Dead’s earliest live arrangements, culminating in the group’s popular renaissance following the release of “Touch of Grey” and the album In the Dark in the summer of 1987. Brackett details how particular recording technologies, notable musical characteristics, modes of attending and listening, and the mechanics of the contemporary music industry shaped this defining moment in the group’s career. Drawing on extensive archival research, Touch of Grey examines how the band and their label worked to produce a hit record, a dynamic music video, and an effective promotional campaign that would propel the Grateful Dead from a group with a devoted cult following to become a pop culture phenomenon.
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cover of Transcendental Meditation in America: How a New Age Movement Remade a Small Town in Iowa

Transcendental Meditation in America

How a New Age Movement Remade a Small Town in Iowa

Joseph Weber

University of Iowa Press, 2014

The Indian spiritual entrepreneur Maharishi Mahesh Yogi took the West by storm in the 1960s and ’70s, charming Baby Boomers fed up with war and social upheaval with his message of meditation and peace. Heeding his call, two thousand followers moved to tiny Fairfield, Iowa, to set up their own university on the campus of a failed denominational college. Soon, they started a school for prekindergarten through high school, allowing followers to immerse themselves in Transcendental Meditation from toddlerhood through PhDs.

Although Fairfield’s longtime residents were relieved to see that their new neighbors were clean-cut and respectably dressed—not the wild-haired, drug-using hippies they had feared—the newcomers nevertheless quickly began to remake the town. Stores selling exotic goods popped up, TM followers built odd-looking homes that modeled the guru’s rules for peace-inspiring architecture, and the new university knocked down a historic chapel, even as it erected massive golden-domed buildings for meditators. Some newcomers got elected—and others were defeated—when they ran for local and statewide offices. At times, thousands from across the globe visited the small town.

Yet Transcendental Meditation did not always achieve its aims of personal and social tranquility. Suicides and a murder unsettled the meditating community over the years, and some followers were fleeced by con men from their own ranks. Some battled a local farmer over land use and one another over doctrine. Notably, the world has not gotten more peaceful.

Today the guru is dead. His followers are graying, and few of their children are moving into leadership roles. The movement seems rudderless, its financial muscle withering, despite the efforts of high-profile supporters such as filmmaker David Lynch and media magnate Oprah Winfrey. Can TM reinvent itself? And what will be the future of Fairfield itself? By looking closely at the transformation of this small Iowa town, author Joseph Weber assesses the movement’s surprisingly potent effect on Western culture, sketches out its peculiar past, and explores its possible future.

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cover of Tricks of the Trade: How to Think about Your Research While You're Doing It

Tricks of the Trade

How to Think about Your Research While You're Doing It

Howard S. Becker

University of Chicago Press, 1998

A classic guidebook from a master teacher and landmark researcher 

Drawing on decades of experience as a researcher and teacher, Howard Becker brings to students and researchers the many valuable techniques for conducting research that he learned and taught. Tricks of the Trade will help students learn how to think about research projects. Assisted by Becker's sage advice, students can make better sense of their research and simultaneously generate fresh ideas on where to look next for new data. The tricks cover four broad areas of social science: the creation of the "imagery" to guide research; methods of "sampling" to generate maximum variety in the data; the development of "concepts" to organize findings; and the use of "logical" methods to explore systematically the implications of what is found. Becker's advice ranges from simple tricks such as changing an interview question from "Why?" to "How?" (as a way of getting people to talk without asking for a justification) to more technical tricks such as how to manipulate truth tables.

Becker has extracted these tricks from a variety of fields such as art history, anthropology, sociology, literature, and philosophy; and his dazzling variety of references ranges from James Agee to Ludwig Wittgenstein. Becker finds the common principles that lie behind good social science work, principles that apply to both quantitative and qualitative research. He offers practical advice, ideas students can apply to their data with the confidence that they will return with something they hadn't thought of before.
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cover of Trusted Platform Modules: Why, when and how to use them

Trusted Platform Modules

Why, when and how to use them

Ariel Segall

The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2017

Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs) are small, inexpensive chips which provide a limited set of security functions. They are most commonly found as a motherboard component on laptops and desktops aimed at the corporate or government markets, but can also be found on many consumer-grade machines and servers, or purchased as independent components. Their role is to serve as a Root of Trust - a highly trusted component from which we can bootstrap trust in other parts of a system. TPMs are most useful for three kinds of tasks: remotely identifying a machine, or machine authentication; providing hardware protection of secrets, or data protection; and providing verifiable evidence about a machine's state, or attestation.
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cover of Twentieth-Century American Success Rhetoric: How to Construct a Suitable Self

Twentieth-Century American Success Rhetoric

How to Construct a Suitable Self

John Ramage

Southern Illinois University Press, 2005

Self-help authors like Tom Peters and Stephen Covey, who have dominated best-seller lists over the last two decades, have exercised increasing influence on political, governmental, and educational organizations. By contrast, the topic of American success books— texts that promise to help readers succeed by retrofitting their identity to meet workplace demands—has been ignored by scholars since the 1980s. John Ramage challenges the neglect of this hugely popular literature and revives a once-lively conversation among eminent critics about the social phenomenon represented in the work of Bruce Barton, Dale Carnegie, and Norman Vincent Peale, among others.

Using literary texts from Don Quixote to Catch-22 to gloss the discussion, Ramage utilizes Kenneth Burke’s rhetorical theory to understand symbolic acts and social issues and brings together earlier commentaries within a new critical framework. He considers the problematic and paradoxical nature of success and examines its meaning in terms of its traditional dialectic partner, happiness. A synopsis of seventeenth- to nineteenth-century forerunners prefaces this analysis in which Ramage links literary code heroes with the activities of twentieth-century business leaders to determine whether, in the search for authenticity, the heroic individual or the corporation is ultimately served.

This comprehensive study chronicles the legitimation of the success book genre, enumerates rhetorical strategies used to win over readers, and supplies the historical context that renders each book’s message timely. After considering some of the dangers of crossing disciplinary borders, as exemplified by Deborah Tannen’s work, Ramage critiques Stanley Fish’s theoretical strictures against this practice, finally summoning academic critics to action with a strong call to exert greater influence within the popular marketplace.

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cover of Twenty-One Genres and How to Write Them

Twenty-One Genres and How to Write Them

Brock Dethier

Utah State University Press, 2013

 In this classroom-tested approach to writing, Brock Dethier teaches readers how to analyze and write twenty-one genres that students are likely to encounter in college and beyond. This practical, student-friendly, task-oriented text confidently guides writers through step-by-step processes, reducing the anxiety commonly associated with writing tasks.

In the first section, Dethier efficiently presents each genre, providing models; a description of the genres’ purpose, context, and discourse; and suggestions for writing activities or “moves” that writers can use to get words on the page and accomplish their writing tasks. The second section explains these moves, over two hundred of them, in chapters ranging from “Solve Your Process Problems” and “Discover” to “Revise” and “Present.” Applicable to any writing task or genre, these moves help students overcome writing blocks and develop a piece of writing from the first glimmers of an idea to its presentation. 

This approach to managing the complexity and challenge of writing in college strives to be useful, flexible, eclectic, and brief—a valuable resource for students learning to negotiate unfamiliar writing situations.
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