A thought-provoking exploration of how basketball--and the values rooted in the game--can solve today's most pressing issues, from the professor behind the popular New York University course

NBA and WNBA superstars, Hall of Fame players, coaches, and leading cultural figures have all dropped by New York University Professor David Hollander's course How Basketball Can Save the World course to debate and give insights on how the underlying principles of the game can provide a new blueprint for addressing our diverse challenges and showing what's possible beyond the court.

Now, in How Basketball Can Save the World, Hollander takes us out of the classroom to present a beautiful new philosophy with contributions by many of his past guests and based on values inherent to basketball, such as inclusion and the balancing of individual success with the needs of the collective. These principles move us beyond conflict and confusion toward a more harmonious and meaningful future:

• Positionless-ness: In basketball, players aren't siloed into just one position or responsibility. In life, we can learn to be more adaptive to the challenges we face by embracing a positionless mindset.
• Human Alchemy: We talk a lot about team chemistry, but team alchemy means the creation of something totally new--a team far greater than the sum of its parts.
• Sanctuary: Basketball offers players a critical space to feel safe, free, and expressive. Fostering similar spaces in the real world can encourage people to be their best, happiest, and most productive selves.
• Transcendence: Basketball is about defying gravity, becoming weightless, and flying higher than anyone ever has before. By seeking out this principle, we can elevate ourselves and those around us to a new plane of experience.

Whether you're a seasoned veteran of the game or have never set foot on a court, How Basketball Can Save the World will empower you to become more resilient, tolerant, and wise in your relationship with yourself, others, and the world around you.

In the heyday of low-budget television and scrappy genre filmmaking, producers who needed a soundtrack for their commercial entertainments could reach for a selection of library music: LPs of stock recordings whose contents fit any mood required. Unusual Sounds is a deep dive into a musical universe that has, until now, been accessible only to producers and record collectors; a celebration of this strange industry and an examination of its unique place at the nexus of art and commerce. Featuring original art by Robert Beatty and an introduction by George A. Romero--whose use of library music in Night of the Living Dead changed film history-- Unusual Sounds is mandatory reading for anyone interested in this enigmatic field and its hidden but pervasive cultural influence.

A Hungarian fatalist convinced that the human race is a blemish on God's otherwise perfect universe; a natural resource scientist who's discovered that we exhaust the earth's resources every eight days; an Ultimate Frisbee-playing man-child who's identified a fractal pattern embedded within all matter; a failing novelist desperate for the approval of those she despises; a paralyzed philosophy professor discovering that he can make things happen simply by wanting them badly enough; and a trio of vengeful, superintelligent robots locked in a hangar in South Korea, patiently waiting for some gullible human(s) to release them.

This is a partial cast of Anthropica, a novel that puts Laszlow Katasztr fa's beautiful vision of a universe without us to the test. Because even if Laszlow is merely, as he claims, an agent of fate, he's the one driving this crazy machine. And once he has his team assembled, he just might-against all odds and his own expectations-be able to see his apocalyptic plan to fruition.

The first book-length overview of agricultural development in the ancient world

A Companion to Ancient Agriculture is an authoritative overview of the history and development of agriculture in the ancient world. Focusing primarily on the Near East and Mediterranean regions, this unique text explores the cultivation of the soil and rearing of animals through centuries of human civilization--from the Neolithic beginnings of agriculture to Late Antiquity. Chapters written by the leading scholars in their fields present a multidisciplinary examination of the agricultural methods and influences that have enabled humans to survive and prosper.

Consisting of thirty-one chapters, the Companion presents essays on a range of topics that include economic-political, anthropological, zooarchaeological, ethnobotanical, and archaeobotanical investigation of ancient agriculture. Chronologically-organized chapters offer in-depth discussions of agriculture in Bronze Age Egypt and Mesopotamia, Hellenistic Greece and Imperial Rome, Iran and Central Asia, and other regions. Sections on comparative agricultural history discuss agriculture in the Indian subcontinent and prehistoric China while an insightful concluding section helps readers understand ancient agriculture from a modern perspective.

• Fills the need for a full-length biophysical and social overview of ancient agriculture
• Provides clear accounts of the current state of research written by experts in their respective areas
• Places ancient Mediterranean agriculture in conversation with contemporary practice in Eastern and Southern Asia
• Includes coverage of analysis of stable isotopes in ancient agricultural cultivation
• Offers plentiful illustrations, references, case studies, and further reading suggestions

A Companion to Ancient Agriculture is a much-needed resource for advanced students, instructors, scholars, and researchers in fields such as agricultural history, ancient economics, and in broader disciplines including classics, archaeology, and ancient history.