Journalist and author Michael Scott Moore never thought that his reporting on a Somali pirate trial would lead to three years in captivity, but in The Desert and the Sea, Moore unveils what really happened to him while being imprisoned by pirates. Spending 977 days terrorized by his captors, Moore somehow found the strength to continue on with life and was eventually brought back to the US after the government paid his ransom. Caught in the middle of societies on the verge of collapse, this new memoir not only tells the story of a captive man but also that of societies in ruin.