John Lautner was born in Marquette, Michigan in 1911(16 July 1911 – 24 October 1994). Lautner received his bachelor of science degree from Northern Michigan University and later apprenticed with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin Fellowship in Wisconsin and Arizona.
Lautner generates designs that owe a great deal to his six year fellowship at Taliesin. He creates daring and innovative spaces that fit each design situation and which meet each client’s individual requirements. He attempts to improve life with spaces that meet all basic human needs for emotional, psychological and physical shelter.
Among Lautner’s other works include the Arango Residence in Acapulco, Mexico with its concrete sky-moat, and the landmark Desert Hot Springs Motel in Palm Springs. His dramatic and photogenic spaces are frequently exploited in films, notably the Palm Springs Elrod Residence used to good effect in the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever. Lautner also designed a home on Malibu’s Carbon Beach which was owned by Courtney Cox. The home sold for $33.5 million.
“The purpose of Architecture is to improve human life. Create timeless, free, joyous spaces for all activities in life. The infinite variety of these spaces can be as varied as life itself and they must be as sensible as nature in deriving from a main idea and flowering into a beautiful entity.”(John Lautner)

Mary Stevenson Cassatt : May 22, 1844 – June 14, 1926; was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists.
She was a great practical support to the movement as a whole, both by providing direct financial help and by promoting the works of Impressionists in the USA, largely through her brother Alexander. By persuading him to buy works by Manet, Monet, Morisot, Renoir, Degas and Pissarro, she made him the first important collector of such works in America. She also advised and encouraged her friends the Havemeyers to build up their important collection of works by Impressionists and other contemporary French artists.

David Gaub McCullough -born July 7, 1933 is an American historian and bestselling author.A two-time winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, he is widely referred to as a “master of the art of narrative history.” Among his most well-known books are The Path Between the Seas,Truman, John Adams, and his most recent volume, 1776.
He is part of an emerging group of celebrity historians. He is also a familiar presence on public television— as the host of Smithsonian World and The American Experience, and as the narrator of many well-regarded, highly accessible, and facile documentaries. ( Wikipedia )

     In 1776, David McCullough’s bestselling account of a pivotal year in our nation’s struggle, readers learned of the greatest defeats, providential fortune, and courageous triumphs of George Washington and his bedraggled army. Now, in 1776: The Illustrated Edition, the efforts of the Continental Army are made even more personal, as an excerpted version of the original book is paired with letters, maps, and seminal artwork. More than three dozen source documents – including a personal letter George Washington penned to Martha about his commission, a note informing the mother of a Continental soldier that her son has been taken prisoner, and a petition signed by Loyalists pledging their allegiance to the King -are re-created in uniquely designed envelopes throughout the book and secured with the congressional seal.