Michael Scott Moore is an author and journalist, a California native and a longtime resident of Berlin. Sweetness and Blood, his 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. He has written for The Atlantic, Der Spiegel, Pacific Standard, Bloomberg Businessweek, and the L.A. Review of Books. His latest book is a memoir of his time held captive by pirates, The Desert and the Sea.