"It opened as the Maine School for Feeble-Minded, and became Pownal State School. Next it was Pineland Hospital and Training Center, then Pineland Center. That turned into Pineland: A Comprehensive Center for the Developmentally Disabled, then back into Pineland Center.".

"Whatever its proper name, Pineland was also quite a story. In fact it was quite a few stories: upsetting stories, heartwarming stories, funny stories, horrifying stories - a remarkable mix of the likely and the unlikely, all gathered here in this first full history of the place and its people.".

"The Pineland story is your story, too, if you are a resident or friend of Maine - or any of the many other states that supported similar institutions to deal with retardation in the twentieth century. Your tax dollars supported and sometimes failed to support the Pinelands of America, and your attitudes sustained them or helped to close them down. Pineland's Past "is by us all and about us all," says the book's foreword by Maine's governor, Angus S. King, Jr.

It's a story without end, a story that continues today, because Pineland and its many counterparts continue to influence care of people with disabilities in the twenty-first century."--BOOK JACKET.