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. As a qualitative study, the work examines how the participants' embrace of self-sovereignty and confrontation of mortality revive their awareness of and appreciation for shared humanity. The analyses of death talk draw heavily from Jürgen Habermas theory of communicative action. The theory proposes that different communication and argumentation styles, what he terms discourses, can be harnessed for seeking answers to major social issues. The findings reveal, however, that no central, key theme that can universally frame mortality surfaced aside from its participants envisioning death as a people, community-oriented experience. Rather than see this as a limitation of Habermas's theory, Fong attributes the findings to the depth of the theme of mortality itself, a depth that inspired the grass roots to engage in all kinds of death talk that attend to living and dying in contemporary society. These are thus the different "horizons" of mortality presented in the work, horizons that enabled café participants to reimagine their birth, life and death in a manner that frees them from systemic narratives. While divisive identity politics continue to foster neo-tribalisms and the construction of myriad "others," Fong makes visible how those who participate in Death Cafés manage to instead build community with strangers. In the process, many are inspired toward living more fulfilling lives as part of a shared humanity. Through death talk unfettered from systemic control, participants end up feeling more agency over their own lived lives as well as being more conscious of the possibility of a "good death." In Jack Fong's analysis of language used at seven different Death Cafés, the most common word was not "fear" or "suffering" or "loss." The most common word was "people." This is what brings participants to Death Cafés over and over again. Strangers end up like family because they're having conversations that aren't happening anywhere else — discussions about deep-seated fears, childhood anxieties, dying relatives. Yet such topics don't make the virtual room feel tense. They make it feel free. -- Julie Zigoris , writer and novelist, "Dying for a better life," Boston Globe, August 1, 2021. This work takes readers on a remarkable journey across the terrain of social responses to mortality through the distinctive Death Cafe movement. It demonstrates how the movement confronts core challenges of mortality, as well as the deleterious grip that the market, medicine, and media arms have on our thinking about death and life. Through Jack Fong's incisive ethnography, a major step forward in the development of a 21st century humanistic social science is illuminated. -- Dr. John Brown Childs , Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, at the University of California, Santa Cruz and author of Transcommunality: From the Politics of Conversion to the Ethics of Respect . For many, the prospect of death and dying in post-industrial society is as terrifying as it is isolating. Employing Habermas, Fromm, and Wolf, Jack Fong's analyses illuminates how the media, medicine, and market sanitizes the subjectivitiy of dying, and how the Death Cafe movement is responding by inspiring its members to reimagine and reclaim what it means to be mortal. Fong's nuanced, timely, and empathetic sociological study is of the highest, most urgent order. -- Dr. Kevin McCaffree , Assistant Professor of Sociology at Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne and author of The Secular Landscape: The Decline of Religion in America . The analysis of the death café data makes use of Habermas's theory of communicative action, and also draws on the ideas of Erich Fromm and Karl Wolff. For readers who are unfamiliar with the work of these theorists the chapters covering their work may be rather heavy going, as the discussions seem not to be written for the general reader. Fong views the death café movement as a social movement which involves communities around the world. He argues that, in this role, the death café simultaneously acts as a critique of contemporary risk society and a celebration of the ability to transcend risk society. Through communicative action, participants in the death café, largely strangers to each other, bridge the gap between fear and acceptance of their own dying. In doing so, they are sometimes able to generate a degree of ontological security which enables them to feel secure in their worlds. This is an interesting book, offering a theoretical approach to the death café movement that requires further exploration. -- Dr. Glenys Caswell , Mortality , Vol. 2