Fra Angelico was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance, described by Vasari in his Lives of the Artists as having "a rare and perfect talent". He earned his reputation for with the series of frescoes he made for his own friary, San Marco, in Florence, he was known to contemporaries as Fra Giovanni Angelico. In modern Italian he is called Beato Angelico. In 1982, Pope John Paul II proclaimed his beatification in recognition of the holiness of his life, thereby making the title of "Blessed" official. Fiesole is sometimes misinterpreted as being part of his formal name, but it was the name of the town where he took his vows as a Dominican friar, was used by contemporaries to separate him from others who were known as Fra Giovanni, he is listed in the Roman Martyrology as Beatus Ioannes Faesulanus, cognomento Angelicus—"Blessed Giovanni of Fiesole, surnamed'the Angelic' ". Vasari wrote of Fra Angelico that "it is impossible to bestow too much praise on this holy father, so humble and modest in all that he did and said and whose pictures were painted with such facility and piety."

Fra Angelico was born Guido di Pietro at Rupecanina in the Tuscan area of Mugello near Fiesole towards the end of the 14th century. Nothing is known of his parents, he was baptized Guidolino. The earliest recorded document concerning Fra Angelico dates from October 17, 1417 when he joined a religious confraternity or guild at the Carmine Church, still under the name of Guido di Pietro; this record reveals that he was a painter, a fact, subsequently confirmed by two records of payment to Guido di Pietro in January and February 1418 for work done in the church of Santo Stefano del Ponte. The first record of Angelico as a friar dates from 1423, when he is first referred to as Fra Giovanni, following the custom of those entering one of the older religious orders of taking a new name, he was a member of the local community at Fiesole, not far from Florence, of the Dominican Order. Fra, a contraction of frater, is a conventional title for a mendicant friar. According to Vasari, Fra Angelico received training as an illuminator working with his older brother Benedetto, a Dominican and an illuminator.

The former Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence, now a state museum, holds several manuscripts that are thought to be or by his hand. The painter Lorenzo Monaco may have contributed to his art training, the influence of the Sienese school is discernible in his work, he trained with master Varricho in Milan He had several important charges in the convents he lived in, but this did not limit his art, which soon became famous. According to Vasari, the first paintings of this artist were an altarpiece and a painted screen for the Charterhouse of Florence. From 1408 to 1418, Fra Angelico was at the Dominican friary of Cortona, where he painted frescoes, now destroyed, in the Dominican Church and may have been assistant to Gherardo Starnina or a follower of his. Between 1418 and 1436 he was at the convent of Fiesole, where he executed a number of frescoes for the church and the Altarpiece, deteriorated but has since been restored. A predella of the Altarpiece remains intact and is conserved in the National Gallery, is a great example of Fra Angelico's ability.

It shows Christ in Glory surrounded by more than 250 figures, including beatified Dominicans. In 1436, Fra Angelico was one of a number of the friars from Fiesole who moved to the newly built convent or friary of San Marco in Florence; this was an important move which put him in the centre of artistic activity of the region and brought about the patronage of Cosimo de' Medici, one of the wealthiest and most powerful members of the city's governing authority and founder of the dynasty that would dominate Florentine politics for much of the Renaissance. Cosimo had a cell reserved for himself at the friary in order, it was, according to Vasari, at Cosimo's urging that Fra Angelico set about the task of decorating the convent, including the magnificent fresco of the Chapter House, the often-reproduced Annunciation at the top of the stairs leading to the cells, the Maesta with Saints and the many other devotional frescoes, of smaller format but remarkable luminous quality, depicting aspects of the Life of Christ that adorn the walls of each cell.

In 1439 Fra Angelico completed one of the San Marco Altarpiece at Florence. The result was unusual for its time. Images of the enthroned Madonna and Child surrounded by saints were common, but they depicted a setting, heaven-like, in which saints and angels hovered about as divine presences rather than people, but in this instance, the saints stand squarely within the space, grouped in a natural way as if they were able to converse about the shared experience of witnessing the Virgin in glory. Paintings such as this, known as Sacred Conversations, were to become the major commissions of Giovanni Bellini and Raphael. In 1445 Pope Eugene IV summoned him to Rome to paint the frescoes of the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament at St Peter's demolished by Pope Paul III. Vasari claims that at this time Fra Angelico was offered the Archbishopric of Florence by Pope Nicholas

The Wisconsin model of socio-economic attainment is a model that describes and explains an individual's social mobility and its economic and psychological determinants. The logistics of this model are attributed to William H. Sewell, as well as his colleagues Archibald Haller and Alejandro Portes; the model receives its name from the state in which a significant amount of the research and analysis was completed. Unlike the previous research on this topic by Peter Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan, this model encompasses more than just educational and occupational factors and their effect on social mobility for American males. Before the framework for the Wisconsin model was constructed, Peter Blau and Otis Duncan established the first model of social mobility of its kind. However, the Blau-Duncan model was made up of only five predictors; these included father's education and occupation, the individual's education and first job, the individual's job several years later. Sewell and his counterparts aimed to contribute to the Blau-Duncan model of status attainment by adding predictor variables.

Because the results given by the Blau-Duncan model were based on "structural factors as explanatory variables", the Wisconsin model was created to account for "social-psychological factors on educational and occupational attainment", which in turn, provided more accurate prediction. These variables, in turn, came from analyses done by Sewell and Haller in the 1950s and published by Haller and Miller; the latter work includes the theory. The model consisted of eight characteristics that most linked socio-economic background and status attainment; these included occupational attainment, educational attainment, level of occupational aspiration, level of educational aspiration, the influence of significant others, academic performance, socioeconomic status, mental ability. Measured by Otis Dudley Duncan's socio-economic index of occupational status. Achieved by assigning a point value to certain levels of education that a subject has reached. In more recent studies using this model, educational attainment was classified into four levels: no post high school education, vocational school, college attendance, a college degree.

Earlier studies only classified subjects into those who did not. The subject's level is calculated by again categorizing Duncan's socioeconomic index scores in association with the occupation that the subject hope to hold in the future; this is classified by the education level that each subject indicates that they hope to secure. Once again, some recent studies have assigned point values for three levels of desired education level: not continuing education after high school, vocational school, or college. Previous studies only categorized students based on which type institution they planned on attending prior to high school graduation; this variable can be determined by evaluating three perceptions of the subject including: parental and teacher encouragement to attend college, as well as friends' college plans. Additional work regarding the influence of significant others on occupational aspirations was subsequently done by Haller and is students Joseph Woelfel and Ed L. Fink; the original Sewell and Portes article Sewell which first reported the broad outlines of the Wisconsin model relied on data from a statewide survey of all Wisconsin high school seniors that included information about whether students perceived their parents and friends as expecting them to go to college.

Work initiated by Archie O. Haller and implemented by Joseph Woelfel and Edward L. Fink was able to survey adolescent students and identify the specific persons who communicated most with them about education and occupation, who served as examples for their own educational and occupational futures; the "Significant Other Project" produced survey instruments which identified the specific significant others for educational and occupational aspirations and measured their educational and occupational aspirations for the students This value is calculated by the subject's high school class rank. In the original study, socio-economic status was determined by a weighted combination of mother's and father's education, father's occupation, average annual income from 1957-1960; this variable is determined by the analysis of standardized testing. In previous studies, statewide test results for high school juniors and seniors are compared with state intelligence norms; the significant others' direct influence on the subject relates to one's educational and occupational aspirations and educational attainment.

This implies that those who are involved with a subject will have a direct outcome on what type of education the subject receives. This implies that a person's status attainment can only be limited by one's own "perceived ability". Social structural factors, determine the expectations of an individual's significant others—which influence the person's attitudes; these attitudes themselves exert directive forces over both academic performance and educational and occupational attainments. One's desire to attain status is an obligation for occupational attainment; because this model organizes how status aspirations are formed and the way in which they influence "attainment-oriented behavior" the following conclusions can be drawn from the model: "Status aspirations are complex forms of attitudes whose translation into attainment levels is affected by the context in which individuals attempt to enact them." "Attitudes - including levels of aspiration - are formed and altered

The Land Is Bright is a 1941 dramatic play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber; the play, which opened as World War II raged and shortly before American entry into that war, is an epic with patriotic themes. It covers three generations of the fictional Kincaid family, robber barons who made their family fortune with questionable tactics in the 19th century; the second and third acts follow the family over the next generations as they strive to become acceptable in respectable New York high society. The second and some of the third generation engages in much difficult behavior but as the play moves to current time the last generation redeems the family: the patriarch's grandson abjures the pursuit of wealth to serve in the government for the emergency, one great-grandson has enlisted in the Air Corps, most of the other Kincaids exhibit redemptive behavior and learn the nature of patriotic sacrifice in order to become true Americans; the final act ends with a rousing speech for patriotic action in the face of the rising Nazi Germany.

The Land Is Bright is one of Kaufman's few dramas, as he wrote comedies and musicals. Kaufman and Ferber had earlier collaborated on Minick, The Royal Family, Dinner at Eight, Stage Door, would again on Bravo!. The Land Is Bright opened on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre on October 28, 1941. Players included Diana Barrymore as Grant and Linda Kincaid. Future TV star Dick Van Patten played a juvenile role. Max Gordon produced, Kaufmann directed, Jo Mielziner designed the sets; the Land Is Bright was not a big hit, closing on January 3, 1942 after 79 performances and losing about $20,000. John Mason Brown, writing in the New York World-Telegram, gave The Land Is Bright a review which helped kill the play: "Although Mr. Kaufman and Miss Ferber are far from their best when they now re-employ, The Land Is Bright is one of those productions at which you do listen and listen attentively... it is impossible not to realize that as dramatic literature The Land Is Bright is something to be taken about as as a comic strip serial, which it resembles".

Eleanor Roosevelt was more enthusiastic of the message: "leaves you no moment when you are not tensely held by the action on the stage... There were times when... the story was overdrawn, yet... I came away with one great sense of satisfaction, for... It points the moral that the whole level of public responsibility and integrity has gone up over the period of the last fifty years."The play was published once, in 1941, is out print since, being available only in manuscript form and has been staged since its Broadway run. The Palmetto Players of Converse College mounted a production in 1942. Kaufman, George S.. The Land is Bright. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company