What is a Nittany Lion? The most frequently asked question about Penn State University is answered definitively for the first time in this beautifully illustrated book. Penn State librarians Jackie Esposito and Steven Herb have devoted hundreds of hours of research to uncover the fascinating and colorful history behind the beloved Penn State icon. Elements of the tale include the tragic legend of Indian Princess Nita-nee, for whom the majestic mountain in Central Pennsylvania is named; the story of the Original Nittany Lion, the elusive mountain lion that once roamed the hills of Pennsylvania; the 1904 Penn State baseball game at Princeton University, where the idea of a school mascot was born; the creation of the famous limestone Nittany Lion Shrine on Penn State's University Park campus; and the "Men in the Suit," the many Penn State students who have played the role of the Nittany Lion Mascot. This tale is also the story of many important figures in Penn State and Pennsylvania history, including folklorist Henry Shoemaker, baseball player and student leader H. D. "Joe" Mason, sculptor Heinz Warneke, famous mascot Norm Constantine, and football coaching legends "Rip" Engle and Joe Paterno. Sure to be of interest to Penn State's 340,000 living alumni and the countless numbers of Nittany Lion fans all over the world, this book will also appeal to folklorists and Pennsylvania historians.

Today his memory lives on in the legends he helped promote, such as that of the Indian princess "Nita-nee," for whom Central Pennsylvania's Nittany Mountain is supposedly named, and his instrumental role in creating Pennsylvania's noted system of parks and forests and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

In Wood Hicks and Bark Peelers, Ronald E. Ostman and Harry Littell draw on the stunning documentary photography of William T. Clarke to tell the story of Pennsylvania’s lumber heyday, a time when loggers serving the needs of a rapidly growing and globalizing country forever altered the dense forests of the state’s northern tier. Discovered in a shed in upstate New York and a barn in Pennsylvania after decades of obscurity, Clarke’s photographs offer an unprecedented view of the logging, lumbering, and wood industries during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They show the great forests in the process of coming down and the trains that hauled away the felled trees and trimmed logs. And they show the workers—cruisers, jobbers, skidders, teamsters, carpenters, swampers, wood hicks, and bark peelers—their camps and workplaces, their families, their communities. The work was demanding and dangerous; the work sites and housing were unsanitary and unsavory. The changes the newly industrialized logging business wrought were immensely important to the nation’s growth at the same time that they were fantastically—and tragically—transformative of the landscape. An extraordinary look at a little-known photographer’s work and the people and industry he documented, this book reveals, in sharp detail, the history of the third phase of lumber in America.

Refugee. Queen. Saint. Based on the lives of Saint Margaret of Scotland and her husband, King Malcolm III, in eleventh-century Scotland, a young woman strives to fulfill her destiny despite the risks... Shipwrecked on the Scottish coast, a young Saxon princess and her family—including the outlawed Edgar of England—ask sanctuary of the warrior-king Malcolm Canmore, who shrewdly sees the political advantage. He promises to aid Edgar and the Saxon cause in return for the hand of Edgar’s sister, Margaret, in marriage. A foreign queen in a strange land, Margaret adapts to life among the barbarian Scots, bears princes, and shapes the fierce warrior Malcolm into a sophisticated ruler. Yet even as the king and queen build a passionate and tempestuous partnership, the Scots distrust her. When her husband brings Eva, a Celtic bard, to court as a hostage for the good behavior of the formidable Lady Macbeth, Margaret expects trouble. Instead, an unlikely friendship grows between the queen and her bard, though one has a wild Celtic nature and the other follows the demanding path of obligation. Torn between old and new loyalties, Eva is bound by a vow to betray the king and his Saxon queen. Soon imprisoned and charged with witchcraft and treason, Eva learns that Queen Margaret—counseled by the furious king and his powerful priests—will decide her fate and that of her kinswoman Lady Macbeth. But can the proud queen forgive such deep treachery? Impeccably researched, a dramatic page-turner, Queen Hereafter is an unforgettable story of shifting alliances and the tension between fear and trust as a young woman finds her way in a dangerous world.

Reprint of a 1916 collection of Pennsylvania folklore. Includes twenty-six legends set in Central Pennsylvania and the Juniata Valley.