Peter and Bozena are studying medicine, they love each other and want to be together. The girl, after a dramatic experience, breaks off contact with her parents and moves out.
In a summer in Shonan village, Sumiko is the daughter of an important upper-class Shikishima family, she loves to paint pictures, is going through a cooling-off of an arranged marriage that did not work out.
Nin Kwok has a peaceful life in New Jersey with a wife and child. But an attempt on the life of his foster father takes him back to the mean streets of New York.
Gives a brief overview of the history, geography, distribution of population, the political/social/economic systems, the Catholic Church, the military, and the problems in South America.