The story of deer management in Pennsylvania is as complex as it is controversial. From the disappearance of deer in Pennsylvania forests at the beginning of the twentieth century to the population explosion that occurred in the latter half of the century, the balance between herd size and a healthy forest has long been a difficult one. In Deer Wars, Bob Frye examines this controversy and the effect that herd management has had on all of the citizens of Pennsylvania; farmers managing deer invasions and property rights, hunters dealing with changing herd densities and ever-complex...

Now in paperback, and with a new preface, Julia Kasdorf's The Body and the Book: Writing from a Mennonite Life investigates the often difficult relationships among writing, community, and belief. In the ten essays collected here--presented in relation to poetry as well as photographs and other illustrations--Kasdorf draws on family stories, historical documentation, and her own experiences to examine aspects of Mennonite life and explore a variety of themes, including gender, community, silence, place, identity, and the body.

In each of the four sections of The Body and...

The 1987 NCAA championship game between the Penn State Nittany Lions and the University of Miami Hurricanes is often considered the most memorable championship game in all of college football history. Both teams were undefeated going into the game, but the Hurricanes were heavily favored, as they had demolished each of their opponents during the regular season. On January 2, 1987, Penn State pulled off one of the most surprising upsets in college football by handing the University of Miami team its only loss of the season. In The Perfect Season, with help from the Penn State...

First published in 1986, Slow Burn chronicles Centralia's demise from an underground coal mine fire and depicts a singular epic event in Pennsylvania history, representing the confluence of environmental, scientific, bureaucratic, and emotional tragedies. As an award-winning photojournalist, Jacobs moved into a house in Centralia's impact zone in 1983 to document in photographs and interviews the end stages of the tiny anthracite coal town's unsuccessful fight to resolve the intractable problems that began with the mine fire in 1962 and culminated in the razing of the town by the...

Charles Albert Bender was one of baseball's most talented pitchers. By the end of his major league career in 1925, he had accrued 212 wins and more than 1,700 strikeouts, and in 1953, he became the first American Indian elected to baseball's Hall of Fame. But as a high-profile Chippewa Indian in a bigoted society, Bender knew firsthand the trauma of racism. In Money Pitcher: Chief Bender and the Tragedy of Indian Assimilation, William C. Kashatus offers the first biography of this compelling and complex figure.

Bender's career in baseball began on the sandlots of...

Five-and-ten stores were immensely popular during the middle of the twentieth century, selling cheap, dependable goods to people from all walks of life. Now the product of a bygone era, these stores were revolutionary in their time, but few today appreciate how important they were in creating our present-day consumer culture. In this sensitive yet honest look at one of the best-known chains of five-and-tens, Jason Togyer traces the history of the G. C. Murphy Company, headquartered in McKeesport, Pennsylvania.

Though not the largest chain, nor the first, Murphy's is remembered today...

Hailing from the Keystone State's rugged western counties, the Eleventh Pennsylvania Reserves was one of the Civil War's most heavily engaged units. Of more than 2,100 regiments raised by the North, it suffered the eighth highest number of battle deaths, earning it the gruesome sobriquet "Bloody Eleventh."

Three Years in the "Bloody Eleventh" tells the story of this often-overlooked element of the Army of the Potomac from before the war up through 1864. Drawing on letters, diaries, and archival documents, Joseph Gibbs writes of men such as Colonel Thomas Gallagher, who led...

What is the Lincoln Trail in Pennsylvania? It is the story of Abraham Lincoln in the Keystone State--the chronicle of where he went, what he did, and what he said in the state. The trail begins with Lincoln's Pennsylvania ancestors, moves on to his travels, public appearances, and speeches, and concludes with his funeral train in 1865. The Lincoln Trail in Pennsylvania tells a story for the reader, but it is also a guide for those who would travel the state figuratively or literally, to recover the memory of America's sixteenth president.

The Lincoln Trail in...

The last half of the twentieth century was a time of great social and economic change for Pennsylvanians. It was also a tumultuous time in state politics. Vincent Carocci lived through these years, spending the last four decades of the century as a journalist and political insider, rising to the post of press secretary to Governor Robert P. Casey in 1989. In A Capitol Journey, this veteran journalist and political insider offers a colorful and honest look at the ups and downs of state politics, Pennsylvania style.

Carocci's story is the story of a professional lifetime in...