Disenchanted and bitterly resentful, the historian Dr. Dallow has been released after 21 months in prison for playing piano in a subversive student cabaret. He refuses the Stasi's offer to help him get his university position back in exchange for becoming an informant. He lives in increasing isolation and despair as he tries to deal with the hypocritical social system and the injustice done to him. Things change after Soviet tanks roll into Prague...

In the distant future, somewhere in the galaxy, a world has evolved where each person has multiple bodies, cybernetics has abolished privacy, and individual and family success are reliant upon instantaneous evaluations of how well each member conforms to the rigid social system. Young Fift is an only child of the Staid gender, struggling to maintain zir position in the system while developing a friendship with the acclaimed bioengineer Shria--a controversial...

While society and culture are closely related, there are minute differences that separate the two. But what is society without culture? Society is the community that surrounds an individual. This community has its own personality and this is how culture is introduced. Many societies are organized in stratified classes and these different classes can cause issues in a society. The gap between the rich and poor classes can sometimes create lasting effects...

Professor Scott E. Page from University of Michigan introduces you to complexity science. You learn how this vibrant and still evolving discipline helps you understand the nature and behavior of systems formed of financial markets, corporations, native cultures, governments, and more.

What does the collapse of sub-prime lending have in common with a broken jackscrew in an airliner's tailplane? Or the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico with the burn-up of Space Shuttle Columbia? These were systems that drifted into failure. While pursuing success in a dynamic, complex environment with limited resources and multiple goal conflicts, a succession of small, everyday decisions eventually produced breakdowns on a massive scale....