The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
Michael Scott Moore, a journalist and the author of Sweetness and Blood, incorporates personal narrative and rigorous investigative journalism in this profound and revelatory memoir of his three-year captivity by Somali pirates—a riveting,thoughtful, and emotionally resonant exploration of foreign policy, religious extremism, and the costs of survival.
In January 2012, having covered a Somali pirate trial in Hamburg for Spiegel Online International—and funded by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting—Michael Scott Moore traveled to the Horn of Africa to write about piracy and ways to end it. In a terrible twist of fate, Moore himself was kidnapped and subsequently held captive by Somali pirates. Subjected to conditions that break even the strongest spirits—physical injury, starvation, isolation, terror—Moore's survival is a testament to his indomitable strength of mind. In September 2014, after 977 days, he walked free when his ransom was put together by the help of several US and German institutions, friends, colleagues, and his strong-willed mother.
Yet Moore's own struggle is only part of the story: The Desert and the Sea falls at the intersection of reportage, memoir, and history. Caught between Muslim pirates, the looming threat of Al-Shabaab, and the rise of ISIS, Moore observes the worlds that surrounded him—the economics and history of piracy; the effects of post-colonialism; the politics of hostage negotiation and ransom; while also conjuring the various faces of Islam—and places his ordeal in the context of the larger political and historical issues.
A sort of Catch-22 meets Black Hawk Down, The Desert and the Sea is written with dark humor, candor, and a journalist's clinical distance and eye for detail. Moore offers an intimate and otherwise inaccessible view of life as we cannot fathom it, brilliantly weaving his own experience as a hostage with the social, economic, religious, and political factors creating it. The Desert and the Sea is wildly compelling and a book that will take its place next to titles like In the Den of Lions and Even Silence Has an End.
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
Michael Scott Moore. (2018). The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Michael Scott Moore. 2018. The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive On the Somali Pirate Coast. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Michael Scott Moore, The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive On the Somali Pirate Coast. HarperCollins, 2018.
MLA Citation (style guide)Michael Scott Moore. The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive On the Somali Pirate Coast. HarperCollins, 2018.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 5 | 5 |
OverDrive Product Record
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0293-1/{B3EBA271-46B8-4930-8503-4A79460481BB}Img100.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0293-1/{B3EBA271-46B8-4930-8503-4A79460481BB}Img200.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0293-1/B3E/BA2/71/{B3EBA271-46B8-4930-8503-4A79460481BB}Img150.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0293-1/B3E/BA2/71/{B3EBA271-46B8-4930-8503-4A79460481BB}Img400.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- formats
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780062449191
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B01N0SGUQC
- name: Kindle Book
- id: ebook-kindle
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780062449191
- name: OverDrive Read
- id: ebook-overdrive
- identifiers:
- mediaType
- eBook
- primaryCreator
- role: Author
- name: Michael Scott Moore
- title
- The Desert and the Sea
- dateAdded
- 2018-07-20T18:37:17.077-04:00
- contentDetails
- href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=3070581
- type: text/html
- account:
- name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
- id: 1151
- sortTitle
- Desert and the Sea 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast
- crossRefId
- 3070581
- subtitle
- 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast
- id
- b3eba271-46b8-4930-8503-4a79460481bb
- starRating
- 4.2
OverDrive MetaData
- isPublicDomain
- False
- formats
- fileName: DesertandtheSea9780062449191
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 1257096
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780062449191
- rights:
- type: Copying
- value: 48
- type: Printing
- value: 48
- type: Lending
- value: 0
- type: ReadAloud
- value: 1
- type: ExpirationRights
- value: 0
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- onSaleDate: 7/24/2018
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=b3eba271-46b8-4930-8503-4a79460481bb&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: DesertandtheSea9780062449191
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B01N0SGUQC
- name: Kindle Book
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-kindle
- onSaleDate: 7/24/2018
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=b3eba271-46b8-4930-8503-4a79460481bb&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: DesertandtheSea9780062449191
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 1256854
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780062449191
- name: OverDrive Read
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-overdrive
- onSaleDate: 7/24/2018
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=b3eba271-46b8-4930-8503-4a79460481bb&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- creators
- role: Author
- fileAs: Moore, Michael Scott
- bioText:
Michael Scott Moore is an accomplished author and journalist, a California native and a longtime resident of Berlin. His comic novel about L.A., Too Much of Nothing, was published in 2003, and Sweetness and Blood, a travel book about the spread of surfing to odd corners of the world, was named a book of the year by The Economist in 2010. Moore has written about politics, literature, and travel for The Atlantic, Der Spiegel, Pacific Standard, Bloomberg Businessweek, and the L.A. Review of Books.
- name: Michael Scott Moore
- imprint
- Harper Wave
- publishDate
- 2018-07-24T00:00:00-04:00
- isOwnedByCollections
- True
- title
- The Desert and the Sea
- fullDescription
Michael Scott Moore, a journalist and the author of Sweetness and Blood, incorporates personal narrative and rigorous investigative journalism in this profound and revelatory memoir of his three-year captivity by Somali pirates—a riveting,thoughtful, and emotionally resonant exploration of foreign policy, religious extremism, and the costs of survival.
In January 2012, having covered a Somali pirate trial in Hamburg for Spiegel Online International—and funded by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting—Michael Scott Moore traveled to the Horn of Africa to write about piracy and ways to end it. In a terrible twist of fate, Moore himself was kidnapped and subsequently held captive by Somali pirates. Subjected to conditions that break even the strongest spirits—physical injury, starvation, isolation, terror—Moore's survival is a testament to his indomitable strength of mind. In September 2014, after 977 days, he walked free when his ransom was put together by the help of several US and German institutions, friends, colleagues, and his strong-willed mother.
Yet Moore's own struggle is only part of the story: The Desert and the Sea falls at the intersection of reportage, memoir, and history. Caught between Muslim pirates, the looming threat of Al-Shabaab, and the rise of ISIS, Moore observes the worlds that surrounded him—the economics and history of piracy; the effects of post-colonialism; the politics of hostage negotiation and ransom; while also conjuring the various faces of Islam—and places his ordeal in the context of the larger political and historical issues.
A sort of Catch-22 meets Black Hawk Down, The Desert and the Sea is written with dark humor, candor, and a journalist's clinical distance and eye for detail. Moore offers an intimate and otherwise inaccessible view of life as we cannot fathom it, brilliantly weaving his own experience as a hostage with the social, economic, religious, and political factors creating it. The Desert and the Sea is wildly compelling and a book that will take its place next to titles like In the Den of Lions and Even Silence Has an End.
- reviews
- premium: False
- source: Susan Casey, author of Voices in the Ocean: A Journey Into the Wild and Haunting World of Dolphins
- content: "If you read Michael Scott Moore's book, first clear your schedule, because you won't put it down until you've finished it. The Desert and The Sea is an astonishing and harrowing story, told with great humanity, by a writer who ventures where few will ever go."
- premium: False
- source: Jeffrey Gettleman, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Love, Africa
- content: "Highly addictive reading material....Michael Scott Moore delivers an amazing true-life thriller, one of the most suspenseful books written in recent years, that tracks across oceans and underworlds, culminating in a very rewarding, deeply profound end."
- premium: False
- source: Tom Barbash, author of Stay Up With Me
- content: "His account of his nearly three years of captivity is a testament to the strength of one man's indomitable spirit and Moore's great gifts of observation, his humor, wits, and evident gifts as a storyteller. Thank heavens he lived to tell the story, which everyone should now read and cheer."
- premium: False
- source: Library Journal (starred review)
- content: "Among the virtues of this account is that even when discussing sensational happenings, Moore never overdramatizes. This exceptional memoir will attract many readers."
- premium: False
- source: Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
- content: A harrowing and affecting account of two and a half years of captivity at the hands of Somali pirates. A deftly constructed and tautly told rejoinder to Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, sympathetic but also sharp-edged.
- premium: False
- source: Francisco Goldman
- content: When a young man who is good and brave, keenly intelligent and observant, with a lively mind and a learned sense of human and historical complexity, is kidnapped by pirates and kept as a hostage for three years in Somalia's harsh and violent bush, the result is The Desert and the Sea. However much you wish Michael Scott Moore had never had cause to write it, this book could not be more engrossing, harrowing, suspenseful, wrenchingly humane and illuminating.
- premium: False
- source: Ben Rawlence
- content: "Not only the definitive book on Somali pirates, but a remarkable work of literature too."
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
June 1, 2018
A harrowing and affecting account of two and a half years of captivity at the hands of Somali pirates."It's hard to write one adventurous book without thinking about another," writes Moore early on, recounting his quest, recounted in Sweetness and Blood (2010), to document how the American fascination with surfing had spread into other parts of the world. Americans and the rest of the world were then fascinated with the pirates making news by marauding off the Horn of Africa, and so the author traveled to witness them firsthand. "The rise of modern pirates buzzing off Somalia was an example of entropy in my lifetime," he writes, "and it seemed important to know why there were pirates at all." He quickly learned. Taken captive, Moore learned lessons in the sociology, economics, and psychology of piracy while at the same time enduring some terrible treatment--some of it for show, some of it quite in earnest--as his captors tried to convince his poor mother, and then whomever would listen, to come up with $20 million for his freedom. There's plenty of gallows humor as Moore settles in for his long spell of unhappiness. When his young captors, "stoned on narcotic cud," blast music from their cellphones, he asks a senior to get them to turn it down. "They're soldiers," he's told by way of explanation, to which he replies, "ask them to be quiet soldiers." Imprisoned among a score or so of other captives, mostly Chinese and Filipino, the author discerned that many Somalis turn to piracy for lack of other opportunities, but while "each pirate was here to steal my money," few were eager to cause him personal harm. Moore's humane consideration of his captors reflects some of the small kindnesses he was shown, but it also contrasts with the indifference of Western officials who, it seems, would sooner have sent in the bombers than pay the ransom.A deftly constructed and tautly told rejoinder to Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, sympathetic but also sharp-edged.COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
June 1, 2018
Venturing to the Horn of Africa in January 2012 to write about piracy, Moore was kidnapped by Somali pirates and held for 977 days. More than just a recall of his struggle to survive, this work weaves together a history of piracy, the consequences of colonialism, the subtleties of hostage negotiation, and the rise of various Islamic extremists. With a 50,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- popularity
- 632
- links
- self:
- href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/b3eba271-46b8-4930-8503-4a79460481bb/metadata
- type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
- self:
- id
- b3eba271-46b8-4930-8503-4a79460481bb
- starRating
- 4.1
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0293-1/{B3EBA271-46B8-4930-8503-4A79460481BB}Img100.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0293-1/{B3EBA271-46B8-4930-8503-4A79460481BB}Img200.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0293-1/B3E/BA2/71/{B3EBA271-46B8-4930-8503-4A79460481BB}Img150.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0293-1/B3E/BA2/71/{B3EBA271-46B8-4930-8503-4A79460481BB}Img400.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- isPublicPerformanceAllowed
- False
- languages
- code: en
- name: English
- subjects
- value: Biography & Autobiography
- value: History
- value: Politics
- value: Nonfiction
- publishDateText
- 07/24/2018
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780062449184
- mediaType
- eBook
- shortDescription
Michael Scott Moore, a journalist and the author of Sweetness and Blood, incorporates personal narrative and rigorous investigative journalism in this profound and revelatory memoir of his three-year captivity by Somali pirates—a riveting,thoughtful, and emotionally resonant exploration of foreign policy, religious extremism, and the costs of survival.
In January 2012, having covered a Somali pirate trial in Hamburg for Spiegel Online International—and funded by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting—Michael Scott Moore traveled to the Horn of Africa to write about piracy and ways to end it. In a terrible twist of fate, Moore himself was kidnapped and subsequently held captive by Somali pirates. Subjected to conditions that break even the strongest spirits—physical injury, starvation, isolation, terror—Moore's survival is a testament to his indomitable strength of mind. In September 2014, after 977 days, he walked free when his...
- sortTitle
- Desert and the Sea 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast
- crossRefId
- 3070581
- subtitle
- 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast
- publisher
- HarperCollins
- bisacCodes
- code: BIO026000
- description: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs
- code: HIS001020
- description: History / Africa / East
- code: POL035010
- description: Political Science / Human Rights
