"Absolutely terrifying." -- Benjamin Kerstein, author of The Forsaken From prize-winning author and award-winning journalist Michael J. Totten comes TAKEN: A writer is ripped from his home and hauled bound and gagged to a remote house in the wilderness. Four ruthless captors with overseas ties and a plan here at home-the frighteningly rational leader of a homegrown Al Qaeda terrorist cell; a torturer who learned his trade in the dungeons of Egypt; and two henchmen, one a grinning sadist who can hardly wait to start cutting. Taken on a harrowing journey across three states into his very worst nightmare, he faces a terrible choice. Prove himself and join them. Or die. Praise for The Road to Fatima Gate "It is extremely rare to read such an accurate account of anything to which one was oneself a witness." Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great "Totten...practices journalism in the tradition of Orwell: morally imaginative, partisan in the best sense of the word, and delivered in crackling, rapid-fire prose befitting the violent realities it depicts." - Sohrab Ahmari, Commentary Praise for Where the West Ends "Of all the journalists now alive and writing in English, there are few whose reporting interests me more than Michael J. Totten's-in fact, none that I can think of offhand. I spent days thinking about Where the West Ends, deeply affected by the eerie melancholy it evokes and the questions it raises about the borderlands of old empires and the places people don't visit for pleasure." - Claire Berlinski, author of Menace in Europe