Bul-Boo and Madillo are worried about their friend Winifred, who has lost her gentle smile and no longer puts up her hand in class. Then the twins discover her secret: she is to be married off to her uncle\"s friend, who drinks heavily and is old enough to be her grandfather....

One morning twelve-year-old Fred wakes up with an unaccountable sense of foreboding, which his friend Bul-Boo, one of the twins from next door, insists is just in his imagination....

How converging technological, economic, political, and social forces are shaping our world and our future-and how our choices today can lead to a new age of prosperity....