Building the kernel involves a few steps: configuring it and compiling it. There are a few ways to configure the kernel. If you don't like the way this book does it, read the README that comes with the kernel source tree, and find out what the options are. The following commands are run to build the kernel:
cd /usr/src/linux &&
make mrproper &&
make menuconfig &&
make dep &&
make bzImage &&
make modules &&
make modules_install &&
cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/lfskernel &&
cp System.map /boot
Note: the arch/i386/boot/bzImage path may vary on different platforms.