Links the history of race relations to the history of basketball by reviewing the era of the first Black teams, the first integration of teams, and the innovations that Black players have brought to the game

Get leadership-fit and see results in yourself and others. Leadership and fitness are both journeys of self-discovery. Both require self-awareness, passion, and commitment. Both have the potential to inspire others. And for both, results come only with effort. To achieve great heights, you must be willing to take the first step, put in the work, and overcome the inevitable obstacles. In Peak Leadership Fitness: Elevating Your Leadership Game, leadership coach and fitness expert Timothy J. Tobin invites you to share the lessons he’s learned at the intersection of physical and leadership fitness. With the encouraging style of a trainer-coach, Tobin shares his four fitness principles: You never know what you’re capable of until you take that first step. You must put in the effort. You learn more about yourself when times are tough. What you consume matters. Tobin describes the foundations for leadership fitness, including motivation and mindset, and details his steps to becoming leadership-fit. From taking your pulse to seeking recovery by building endurance, Tobin employs fitness metaphors while remaining aware of the critical difference between personal fitness and leadership—the stakes are much higher with leadership. This book was written for today’s and tomorrow’s leaders facing today’s challenges—time constraints, overcrowded leadership development landscape, and uncertainty about where to start. It is grounded in learning and development and leadership research and illustrated with true-to-life vignettes, sample leadership fitness plans, templates, and tip sheets. Tobin points out the opportunities for leadership development that are all around you—you just need to know where to look and how to integrate the activities into your regular routine. Train smart; train often. Build good habits. Develop yourself and others. You’ve got this!

Leveling up is the only foolproof success strategy. It means owning your responsibility for taking control of who you are, what you do, and what your life will become. This book is written for the men and women grinding it out every day at work and wanting so badly to be more valued and get to the next level. It’s for the young professionals entering the workforce with big dreams who want to know exactly what it takes to advance in their career. It’s for anyone who has wanted more out of life but just hasn’t been able to make the shift to take control of their future. Many books teach you the steps you need to take to change your life. But they’re missing the critical foundational action that is necessary to ensure your new habits stick—the one element that distinguishes high-achieving professionals from those still waiting for success to find them. Most people know what they should do, and yet they don’t do it. The fact is that it does not matter how much you know—nothing will change for you unless you own the responsibility of leveling up. Alyson Van Hooser has discovered the crucial knowledge you must have, actions you must take, and areas of your life you must own if you want to shift the trajectory of your professional life to work in your favor. In Level Up, you’ll learn the secrets to professionalization and the exact steps required to gain respect, increase opportunity, and harness the power to crush all your goals, including: How to lay down your law so you don’t get off track How to get ahead by identifying and strategically adapting to what motivates individuals in different generations, from different social classes, with different life experiences How to make your emotions work for rather than against you Ways to make networking impressive instead of awkward What self-care truly means (hint: choosing YOU and your goals) And much more! Be bold. Make your own hype. And be accountable to the grind. Success and growth are often uncomfortable, but you’re not going to crush your goals by sitting idle, doing the bare minimum, and following the herd. It’s time to LEVEL UP.

The modern day youth sports environment has taken the enjoyment out of athletics for our children. Currently, 70% of kids drop out of organized sports by the age of 13, which has given rise to a generation of overweight, unhealthy young adults. There is a solution. John O’Sullivan shares the secrets of the coaches and parents who have not only raised elite athletes, but have done so by creating an environment that promotes positive core values and teaches life lessons instead of focusing on wins and losses, scholarships, and professional aspirations. Changing the Game gives adults a new paradigm and a game plan for raising happy, high performing children, and provides a national call to action to return youth sports to our kids.

Anyone can master the fundamentals of game design - no technological expertise is necessary. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses shows that the same basic principles of psychology that work for board games, card games and athletic games also are the keys to making top-quality videogames. Good game design happens when you view your game from many different perspectives, or lenses. While touring through the unusual territory that is game design, this book gives the reader one hundred of these lenses - one hundred sets of insightful questions to ask yourself that will help make your game better. These lenses are gathered from fields as diverse as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, writing, puzzle design, and anthropology. Anyone who reads this book will be inspired to become a better game designer - and will understand how to do it.

Get hands-on with game development tools and techniques in this illustrated guide to build a game project using the latest version of Unreal Engine and C++, two of the most widely used tools in the game industry Key Features Kickstart your career or develop a new hobby by learning game development with Unreal Engine 5 and C++ Learn techniques to prototype and develop your own ideas with key images printed in color Reinforce your skills with project-based learning by building a series of games from scratch Book DescriptionImmerse yourself in the Unreal game projects with this book, written by four highly experienced industry professionals with many years of combined experience with Unreal Engine. Elevating Game Experiences with Unreal Engine 5 will walk you through the latest version of Unreal Engine by helping you get hands-on with the game creation projects. The book starts with an introduction to the Unreal Editor and key concepts such as actors, blueprints, animations, inheritance, and player input. You'll then move on to the first of three projects, building a dodgeball game, where you'll learn the concepts of line traces, collisions, projectiles, user interface, and sound effects. You’ll also discover how to combine these concepts to showcase your new skills. The second project, a side-scroller game, will help you implement concepts such as animation blending, enemy AI, spawning objects, and collectibles. And finally, you'll cover the key concepts in creating a multiplayer environment as you work on the third project, an FPS game. By the end of this Unreal Engine book, you'll have a broad understanding of how to use the tools that the game engine provides to start building your own games.What you will learn Create a fully functional third-person character and enemies Implement navigation with keyboard, mouse, and gamepad Program logic and game mechanics with collision and particle effects Explore AI for games with Blackboards and behavior trees Build character animations with animation blueprints and montages Polish your game with stunning visual and sound effects Explore the fundamentals of game UI using a heads-up display Discover how to implement multiplayer in your games Who this book is for This book is for game developers looking to get started with using Unreal Engine 5 for their game development projects. Anyone who has used Unreal Engine before and wants to consolidate, improve, and apply their skills will find this book useful. To better grasp the concepts explained in this book, prior knowledge of C++ basics such as variables, functions, classes, polymorphism, and pointers is required. For full compatibility with the IDE used in this book, a Windows system is recommended

As organizations grow in volume and complexity, the demands on leadership change. The same old moves won't cut it any more. In Chess Not Checkers, Mark Miller tells the story of Blake Brown, newly appointed CEO of a company troubled by poor performance and low morale. Nothing Blake learned from his previous roles seems to help him deal with the issues he now faces. The problem, his new mentor points out, is Blake is playing the wrong game. The early days of an organization are like checkers: a quickly played game with mostly interchangeable pieces. Everybody, the leader included, does a little bit of everything; the pace is frenetic. But as the organization expands, you can't just keep jumping from activity to activity. You have to think strategically, plan ahead, and leverage every employee's specific talents—that's chess. Leaders who continue to play checkers when the name of the game is chess lose. On his journey, Blake learns four essential strategies from the game of chess that transform his leadership and his organization. The result: unprecedented performance!

Foundation Game Design with HTML5 and JavaScript teaches you everything you need to know about how to make video games. If you’ve never done any programming before and don’t know where to start, this book will show you how to make games from start to finish. You’ll learn all the latest programming technologies (HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript) to create your games. All written in a fun and friendly style with open-ended projects that encourage you to build your own original games. Foundation Game Design with HTML5 and JavaScript starts by showing you how you can use basic programing to create logic games, adventure games, and create interactive game graphics. Design a game character, learn to control it with the keyboard, mouse, or touch screen interface, and then learn how to use collision detection to build an interactive game world. You’ll learn to make maze games, platform jumping games, and fast paced action games that cover all the popular genres of 2D gaming. Create intelligent enemies, use realistic physics, sound effects and music, and learn how to animate game characters. Whether you're creating games for the web or mobile devices, everything you need to get started on a career as a game designer is right here. Focused and friendly introduction to making games with HTML5. Essential programming and graphic design techniques for building games, with each chapter gently building on the skills of preceding chapters. Detailed case studies demonstrating techniques that can be used for making games in a wide variety of genres.

A look at power relations in sports along the axes of gender, race, class, and sexuality.

Washington Post Bestseller Wall Street Journal Bestseller USA Today Bestseller Publishers Weekly Bestseller Do you want to change the course of your life? Do you want to be the best? The best manager, the best athlete, the best artist, the best speaker, the best parent? In There’s No Plan B for Your A-Game, former pro athlete, playwright, and acclaimed leadership coach Bo Eason shows you exactly what it takes to be the best. His proven tools and training have worked for Olympic medalists, military leaders, bestselling authors, professional athletes, and business executives and their teams. There’s No Plan B for Your A-Game explains how to develop the character, integrity, and commitment it takes to become the best. Bo Eason focuses on a winning four-step process that helps you attain the skill, maintain the effort, and persist through challenges: Declaration: What do you want to achieve? Preparation: How can you make it happen? Acceleration: Where will you find the stamina to reach your goal? Domination: Why do you take others with you? With inspiring, specific, real-word guidance, There’s No Plan B for Your A-Game teaches the best practices that lead to the best results, in every walk of life.