About six months before my friend David finished writing his dissertation, the editor in chief at a good university press asked his adviser if he had any promising students. The adviser recommended David. The editor solicited a book proposal, and David sent one in. The editor then passed the project along to another editor. The subject is a case study that opens out into big and trending issues; David was a star graduate student. It didn’t surprise me that a press would be interested in his thesis, which his adviser had encouraged him to think about from the inception as a book.