ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ross MacTaggart enjoys wearing several hats: writer, researcher, architectural designer, carpenter, and urban observer.  After decades on the east coast, MacTaggart is now living in rural Kansas surrounded by the largest remaining intact prairie in America – an ocean of grass. The unique affordability offered by rural America creates an opportunity for MacTaggart to devote the bulk of his time to researching and writing.   MacTaggart lives in a town of 600 people with a block-long main street, and in a charming house surrounded by towering black walnut trees; he spends many of his days writing in a sun-filled office overlooking a verdant yard, when not engaged in an endless remodeling of his home using salvaged building materials.   Ross MacTaggart was born in 1957, in Detroit, Michigan, and spent his childhood weekends aboard a fiberglass sailboat (while pining for the few classic wooden yachts that plied Michigan's Clinton River), and later moved to New York City, where he had a thriving architectural design business during the 1980s and early 1990s. Retiring early, MacTaggart felt himself drawn to a calmer, more affordable life than New York could provide; Kansas has offered a refuge since 1996.   The first three volumes of THE GOLDEN CENTURY series are now complete (the third will be published in 2008). MacTaggart is working on several books covering different topics.