A hundred years after science melded with religion and found a way to divide people into "great" and "less," the Numbers System, as it's called, has been adopted by most countries. In America, lessers are mostly relegated to Lessland-the country-where they grow the crops, work in the factories, and produce the fine goods, art, and entertainment that sustain life in the big cities, where greaters live and pursue business, commerce, and politics. This is a story about one orphaned lesser named Jameson on a journey to discover what it means to be great. His quest takes him to the glittering...

America, France, Japan-young lesser Jame travels to all these places and sees the good and bad of the numbers system in each, but in Japan he finds the heart of it in ways he never expected. Though he's been lonely in Lessland due to the fame and riches that set him apart from other lessers in America, he stumbles upon new friends in Japan his very first day there. A culture of mutual respect and utility appeals to him deeply, even as he struggles with a few very foreign ideas. A group of university students, musicians and artists, form the core of Jame's new life. He and these friends become...

Traumatized by his exposure in Greatland to the truths he's been sheltered from his whole life-about what greaters are really like, how they truly perceive lessers, and all the news and politics lessers are by law forbidden from knowing-Jame retreats to Lessland to begin the process of trying to understand what happened to him and to heal. Now comprehending the great divide between greaters and lessers, Jame feels it's his destiny to attempt to remedy it. He goes on a speaking tour to try to bring the sundered halves of his people to a greater mutual understanding, which takes him through...