I think this title is a bit misleading. South with the Sun is really only half about Amundsen and half about Lynne Cox herself. Cox sees Amundsen as something of a role model because, like her, he did a lot of things that had never been done before - travelling through the Northwest passage, getting to the South pole, and seeing polar flight as the new way forward in arctic exploration. Cox made records for swimming the English channel and for swimming a mile in Antarctica (in a swimsuit and cap!). I met Lynne Cox once - introduced her at a book event - and I liked her enormously. I like Swimming in Antarctica - she's not a fancy writer but it was her story and she did a nice job. But in South with the Sun there is too much Cox and not enough Amundsen. I like hearing about her swims in Greenland and so on - places where Amundsen had been - but I found her discussions of trying to get to talk to people about polar flight a bit tedious - her research methods aren't that interesting.

It was certainly interesting to follow up An Empire of Ice with this book. In Empire of Ice, Amundsen is kind of a bad guy - his sole intention was to win the race to the pole instead of being part of a scientific expedition, and he used dogs! (I love the story of the Royal Geographic Society cheering the dogs but not Amundsen - well, of course they didn't cheer Amundsen - he beat their British guy!) In Lynne Cox's book, Amundsen respects the skills of those people who lived in cold places and seeks out their advice, hence the use of dogs, underwear from seals etc.

I want to give this 2 and a half stars. I keep wavering between 2 and 3.