Never have policy initiatives been so important than in today’s society. Neoliberal manifestations, climate change, civil rights movements, and governmental reactions to these issues have created a backdrop where greater education in policy analysis and development is vital. Policy is often created for accruing power, expanding privilege, and further marginalizing oppressed groups. Educating policy developers and consumers is but one means of harnessing the positive power of policy while restraining the tendencies to pervert policy for the betterment of a powerful hegemonic elite. Policy Matters: Perspectives, Procedures, and Processes demystifies policy, exploring how it may truly be transformative in combatting hegemonic and neoliberal incursions into the educational arena. The traditional theory / practice divide is overcome here, uniquely, as educational policy is united with educational reality to empower educators, education stakeholders, and citizens to use policy, policy development, and policy initiatives for the betterment of society as a whole.

Over three-quarters of this book is devoted to genealogical records of the early settlers of Leeds, Maine. The main section contains biographical and genealogical information regarding more than forty of the town's leading families. Additional noteworthy chapters include the records of marriage intentions from 1801-1901 and the genealogy section containing Leeds men who were living at the time the book was published (c.1901) and listing their children, parentage and paternal and maternal grandparents. The text's narrative history covers: the founding of the town, its location and natural features; aborigines; churches; schools; "Professional Men;" some "First Things;" a list of town officers spanning 1801-1901; and military records for the American Revolution, War of 1812 and Civil War. Appendix I contains the historical and genealogical information of six additional families, three of which were headed by African-American Revolutionary War soldiers. Appendix II consists of two lists of early settlers. The first is a "Schedule of Settlers on Townships on Pegyscot Pejepscot] Patent: Littleboro' Leeds]" between 1781 and 1794, from the original at the Maine Historical Society. The second list of Leeds settlers dates from around 1800 and is copied from Pejepscot Claim papers in the Androscoggin Historical Society. A lot map for the town of Leeds, drawn by the surveyor for the Pejepscot Land Company in the early 1800s, enhances this edition. The new master index will give the researcher easy access to the treasures within this book. This every-name index includes women's maiden and married names, and also contains subjects and towns. This work is illustrated with forty-five portraits and town views.

According to most accounts, the man solely responsible for reviving the modern Olympic Games was Baron Pierre de Coubertin. Now, in "The Modern Olympics," David C. Young challenges this view, revealing that Coubertin was only the last and most successful of many contributors to the dream of the modern Olympics.

Based on thirteen years of research in previously neglected documents, Young reconstructs the fascinating and almost unknown history of the Olympic revival movement in the nineteenth century, including two long-forgotten Olympiads--one in London in 1866 and another in Athens in 1870. He traces the idea for the modern Olympics back to an obscure Greek poet in 1833 and follows the sinuous tale to a small village in England, where W. P. Brookes held local Olympiads, founded the British Olympic Committee, and told Coubertin about his vision of an international Olympics.

Coubertin's main contribution to the founding of the modern Olympics was the zeal he brought to transforming an idea that had evolved over decades into the reality of Olympiad I and all the Olympic Games held thereafter.