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...