South with the Sun Roald Amundsen, His Polar Explorations, and the Quest for Disc...

Roald Amundsen, "the last of the Vikings," left his mark on the Heroic Era as one of the most successful polar explorers ever.

A powerfully built man more than six feet tall, Amundsen's career of adventure began at the age of fifteen (he was born in Norway in 1872 to a family of merchant sea captains and rich ship owners); twenty-five years later he was the first man to reach both the North and South Poles.

Lynne Cox, adventurer and swimmer, author of Swimming to Antarctica ("gripping" --Sports Illustrated) and Grayson ("wondrous, and unforgettable" --Carl Hiaasen), gives us in South with the Sun a full-scale account of the explorer's life and expeditions.

We see Amundsen, in 1903-06, the first to travel the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, in his small ship Gjøa, a seventy-foot refitted former herring boat powered by sails and a thirteen-horsepower engine, making his way through the...