Book excerpt: This first biography of W. Glenn Killinger highlights his tenure as a nine-time varsity letterman at Penn State, where he emerged as one of the best football, basketball and baseball players in the United States. Situating Killinger in his time and place, the author explores the ways in which home-front culture during World War I--focused on heroism, masculinity and sporting culture--created the demand for sports and sports icons and drove the ascent of college athletics in the first quarter of the 20th century.