The Desert and the Sea audiobook

A commentary on heroism, journalism, survival, and sanity. How do journalists report on dangerous situations and emerge with body and soul intact? In some ways one may, in others one can't entirely... The author intelligently and vividly discusses how and why he survived almost 3 years as a hostage. In addition, he contemplates the effects of U.S. involvement in other countries. Excellent, including audio narrator.

This is a fascinating story about the three years of Moore’s captivity by Somali pirates. Moore is a journalist and a gifted storyteller. Moore used his journalist tools of observation, interviewing techniques, and his interest in people’s stories to help him survive and then write an excellent memoir. The author provided a first-hand account of the Muslim pirates, the beginning of Al-Shabaab and the rise of ISIS which revealed the various faces of Islam. I was interested in his analysis of the political and economic problems of Somali.The book is well written; in fact, Moore’s storytelling gift made it read like a page turning novel. The story of his capture, starvation, isolation and injuries made this into a nail-biting thriller. He made this so real I almost felt the flies crawling on my face.I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is just over twelve hours. Coray Snow does an excellent job narrating the story. Snow was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division and is now a full-time audiobook narrator. Snow specializes in science fiction, fantasy, military and history audiobooks. He has a voice that is easy to listen too. He has a reading rhythm appropriate to the story.

I am amazed that a 450 page book about almost three years of captivity was so engrossing. I didn't realize how good a job Moore had done evoking what his captivity was like until the end of the book when he is finally released. Before he even tells you of his reaction to freedom, you can intuit what that would be like (only to a degree, of course) after the deprivation and hopelessness he experienced. Everything about this book was deeply human.

This is the very interesting true story about the author's harrowing experience as a journalist whose desire to interview pirates lead to his kidnapping and over 2 years as a hostage in Somalia.

There is a certain feel to a certain kind of captivity (or isolation) narrative and this one definitely has it - this sense that this person has spent a lot of time alone with their thoughts, and has perhaps written portions, or even the majority, of the book you're reading in their head during the worst stretches of confinement. It's the kind of book where the author seeks to understand his captors, then judges them harshly, then comes around to accepting them as individuals, and then writes them all off as hopeless criminals. And then does it all over again.I was skeptical about how interesting this book could possibly be, having been recently burned by Prisoner, and seeing that it's really just the one guy and seemingly interchangeable captors. But Moore has none of Azarian's pettiness and Azarian has none of Moore's curiosity, and Moore's captors turn out to not be so interchangeable. Plus, he spends a decent chunk of time with a multinational band of hostages aboard a captured fishing boat and they are an extremely colorful cast of characters. If it weren't for the miserable circumstances, the opportunity for him to spend time with people like Rolly seems almost enviable.