Harnessing the empowering ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche to read the human condition of modern existence through a sociological lens, Employing Nietzsche’s Sociological Imagination: How to Understand Totalitarian Democracy confronts the realities of how modernity and its utopianisms affect one’s ability to purpose existence with self-authored meaning. By critically assessing the ideals of modern institutions, the motives of their pundits, and their political ideologies as expression...

This sociological work examines the phenomenon of the Death Café, a regular gathering of strangers from all walks of life who engage in “death talk” over coffee, tea, and desserts. Using insightful theoretical frameworks, Fong explores the common themes that constitute a “death identity” and reveals how Café attendees are inspired to live in light of death because of death. Fong examines how the participants’ embrace of self-sovereignty and confrontation of mortality revive their awareness...

This collection draws insights from an interdisciplinary group of scholars who specialize in diverse methods ranging from ethnography, archival research, and oral histories, to quantitative data analysis and experiments used in the social sciences and humanities to reflect on the empirical, methodological, and practical implications of conducting research beyond one’s national borders. The goal of this book is to help researchers contemplate existing orientations that dominate current rese...

Reconfiguring Global Societies in the Pre-Vaccination Phase of the COVID-19 Pandemic examines lived experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic in communities and societies around the world before the arrival of vaccines. This collection presents analyses of scholars from eight countries, all of whom were engaged in the unfolding crisis of social forces across the world.This timely volume conveys valuable insights about how public officials, the state, healthcare workers, and, ul...

Sometimes the best person to talk to isn't the one that's living.It has been over a year since his wife had passed. FBI Special Agent Jack Paris lived a complex life with one foot in the world of violence and another in a place of normalcy. Now she's gone and Paris seeks a way to continue his connection with her, even without her physical presence.It's a fierce winter in Yosemite and it's not uncommon people end up dead. Hikers fall, cars take a wrong turn. But this was no ...

Promises are made to be kept, no matter how long—or what—it takes.Five years ago, Robert Clarion was immersed in that perilous world of double-crosses, late-night drug deals, and constant glances over his shoulder. A dispute with a drug supplier culminated in the kidnapping of Clarion's daughter Rachel. He made a promise to his wife that, if they got their daughter back, he would get out of the drug business and never let anyone stand in the way of his family's saf...

George Fong presents Book 1 in the Jack Paris Thriller series.