Michael Scott Moore

Michael Scott Moore
Moore reads at Politics & Prose bookstore, July 28, 2018
Born	1969 (age 56–57) Los Angeles, California
Occupation	Author, journalist
Language	English, German
Citizenship	US, Germany
Alma mater	University of California, San Diego
Genre	non-fiction, fiction
Website
radiofreemike.net/home

Michael Scott Moore (born 1969) is an American journalist and novelist. He is the author of Sweetness and Blood (2010), a nonfiction book about the global history of surfing, and The Desert and the Sea (2018), a memoir about his captivity in Somalia. His work has appeared in publications such as The Atlantic¹, The New Republic², and the Los Angeles Times³, and he has served as a writer for SF Weekly⁴ and as an editor for Spiegel Online International.⁵

Moore graduated from University of California, San Diego in 1991 with a degree in German Literature. He lives in Berlin and also holds German citizenship. In January 2012, he was abducted in Galkayo, Somalia while researching a book about modern piracy.⁶ Moore was held captive for over two and a half years, and released September 22, 2014.⁷ He is a member of the Board of Directors of Hostage US, a non-profit that supports American hostages and their families.

Moore traveled to Somalia on a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting to research a book on piracy. He arrived in the town of Galkayo in January 2012 as part of this reporting assignment.

While in Galkayo, Moore was abducted by a local gang of pirates. Several days later, two aid workers, Jessica Buchanan and Poul Thisted, also being held by Somali pirates, were rescued by a Navy SEAL operation. The pirates holding Moore subsequently demanded $20 million.⁸

Officials from the United States and the German Foreign Ministry collaborated on negotiations with the pirates. He was held for more than two and a half years (977 days) before being freed on September 22, 2014. A ransom of $1.6 million was paid for his release.⁹

In 2024, two of the pirates involved in Moore's abduction were each sentenced to 30 years in American prisons.¹⁰

Moore has published three books, including the novel Too Much of Nothing,¹¹ published by Carroll & Graf, and the nonfiction history of surfing Sweetness and Blood: How Surfing Spread from Hawaii and California to the Rest of the World, with Some Unexpected Results, published by Rodale in 2010.¹² Sweetness and Blood was named a Best Book of 2010 by The Economist¹³ and PopMatters.¹⁴ The Desert and the Sea received positive critical attention and appeared on Apple Books category bestseller lists in August 2018.¹⁵

Moore worked as the theater columnist for SF Weekly,¹⁶ until he moved to Berlin, Germany in 2005. In Germany he worked as both a staff and a freelance editor for Spiegel Online International. In 2010-11 he covered a trial of ten Somali pirates in Hamburg who were charged with trying to hijack the MV Taipan.¹⁷

His journalism has been published in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and the Los Angeles Times. From 2009 to 2012, he also wrote a weekly column for Miller-McCune (now Pacific Standard) on trans-Atlantic issues, including the NATO effort against Somali pirates.¹⁸ In 2009, for the column, he sailed on the Turkish frigate Gediz which had been charged with catching pirates in the Gulf of Aden.¹⁹

• Too Much of Nothing New York : Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003. ISBN 9780786711963, OCLC 52460026
• Sweetness and Blood: How Surfing Spread from Hawaii and California to the Rest of the World, with Some Unexpected Results. New York, NY : Rodale, 2010. ISBN 9781605294278, OCLC 922046069
• The Desert and the Sea : 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast, New York, NY : Harper Wave, 2018. ISBN 9780062449177, OCLC 967079760