Now in paperback, with photos and maps added especially for this new edition, here is the acclaimed life story of a woman whose drive and determination inspire everyone she touches. Lynne Cox started swimming almost as soon as she could walk. By age sixteen, she had broken all records for swimming the English Channel. Her daring eventually led her to the Bering Strait, where she swam five miles in thirty-eight-degree water in just a swimsuit, cap, and goggles. In between those accomplishments, she became the first to swim the Strait of Magellan, narrowly escaped a shark attack off the Cape of Good Hope, and was cheered across the twenty-mile Cook Strait of New Zealand by dolphins. She even swam a mile in the Antarctic. Lynne writes the same way she swims, with indefatigable spirit and joy, and shares the beauty of her time in the water with a poet's eye for detail. She has accomplished yet another feat--writing a new classic of sports memoir.

Swimming To Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer

Biographies & Memoirs

Cox, Lynne

Arts & Literature

Mariner Books

Grayson

The true story of a miraculous encounter between a teenaged girl and a baby whale off the coast of California
It was the dark of early morning; seventeen-year-old Lynne Cox was swimming her last half mile back to the pier after a long workout when she became aware that something was swimming with her. The ocean was charged with energy as if a squall was moving in; whatever it was felt large enough to be a white shark coursing beneath her body. In fact, it was a baby gray whale. Lynne quickly realized that if she swam back to the pier, the young calf would follow her to shore and die from collapsed lungs. On the other hand, if Lynne didn’t find the mother whale, the baby would suffer from dehydration and starve to death. Something so enormous—the mother whale would be at least fifty feet long—suddenly seemed very small in the vast Pacific Ocean. This is the story—part mystery, part magical tale—of what happened.

Harvest Books

Grayson is Lynne Cox’s first book since Swimming to Antarctica (“Riveting”—Sports Illustrated; “Pitch-perfect”—Outside). In it she tells the story of a miraculous ocean encounter that happened to her when she was seventeen and in training for a big swim (she had already swum the English Channel, twice, and the Catalina Channel). It was the dark of early morning; Lynne was in 55-degree water as smooth as black ice, two hundred yards offshore, outside the wave break. She was swimming her last half-mile back to the pier before heading home for breakfast when she became aware that something was swimming with her. The ocean was charged with energy as if a squall was moving in; thousands of baby anchovy darted through the water like lit sparklers, trying to evade something larger. Whatever it was, it felt large enough to be a white shark coursing beneath her body. It wasn’t a shark. It became clear that it was a baby gray whale—following alongside Lynne for a mile or so. Lynne had been swimming for more than an hour; she needed to get out of the water to rest, but she realized that if she did, the young calf would follow her onto shore and die from collapsed lungs. The baby whale—eighteen feet long!—was migrating on a three-month trek to its feeding grounds in the Bering Sea, an eight-thousand-mile journey. It would have to be carried on its mother’s back for much of that distance, and was dependent on its mother’s milk for food—baby whales drink up to fifty gallons of milk a day. If Lynne didn’t find the mother whale, the baby would suffer from dehydration and starve to death. Something so enormous—the mother whale was fifty feet long—suddenly seemed very small in the vast Pacific Ocean. How could Lynne possibly find her? Thisis the story—part mystery, part magical tale—of what happened . . .

Sports & Outdoors

KNOPF

De una de las nadadoras profesionales más destacadas del mundo nos llega este maravilloso relato, sobre el poder de la fe que supera todos los obstáculosEn Grayson, Lynne Cox narra la historia de un milagroso e inolvidable encuentro que vivió en el mar a los diecisiete años. En una madrugada serena pero cargada de energía, Lynne nadaba en aguas frías, a doscientos metros de la costa, cuando se percató de que algo nadaba por debajo de ella. Aquello parecía lo bastante grande como para ser un tiburón blanco, pero no lo fue. Resultó ser un bebé ballena que había perdido a su mamá en el mar, y que había seguido a Lynne por más de una milla. Si Lynne no lograba encontrar a la mamá, el bebé ballena se deshidrataría y moriría de hambre. Algo tan enorme como la mamá ballena, que medía quince metros, de pronto parecía muy pequeña en el vasto océano Pacífico. ¿Cómo podría encontrarla Lynne?

Grayson (Spanish Edition)

Community & Culture

Vintage Espanol

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 entire length of the treacherous ice bound route, between the northern Canadian mainland and Canada’s Arctic islands, from Greenland across Baffin Bay, between the Canadian islands, across the top of Alaska into the Bering Strait. The dangerous journey took three years to complete, as Amundsen, his crew, and six sled dogs waited while the frozen sea around them thawed sufficiently to allow for navigation. We see him journey toward the North Pole in Fridtjof Nansen’s famous Fram, until word reached his expedition party of Robert Peary’s successful arrival at the North Pole. Amundsen then set out on a secret expedition to the Antarctic, and we follow him through his heroic capture of the South Pole. Cox makes clear why Amundsen succeeded in his quests where other adventurer-explorers failed, and how his methodical preparation and willingness to take calculated risks revealed both the spirit of the man and the way to complete one triumphant journey after another. Crucial to Amundsen’s success in reaching the South Pole was his use of carefully selected sled dogs. Amundsen’s canine crew members—he called them “our children”—had been superbly equipped by centuries of natural selection for survival in the Arctic. “The dogs,” he wrote, “are the most important thing for us. The whole outcome of the expedition depends on them.” On December 14, 1911, Roald Amundsen and four others, 102 days and more than 1,880 miles later, stood at the South Pole, a full month before Robert Scott. Lynne Cox describes reading about Amundsen as a young girl and how because of his exploits was inspired to follow her dreams. We see how she unwittingly set out in Amundsen’s path, swimming in open waters off Antarctica, then Greenland (always without a wetsuit), first as a challenge to her own abilities and then later as a way to understand Amundsen’s life and the lessons learned from his vision, imagination, and daring. South with the Sun—inspiring, wondrous, and true—is a bold adventure story of bold ambitious dreams.

South with the Sun: Roald Amundsen, His Polar Explorations, and the Quest for Discovery

Water Sports

Lynne Cox has set open water swimming records across the world, and now she has focused her decades-long experience and expertise into this definitive guide to swimming. Cox methodically addresses what is needed to succeed at and enjoy open water swimming, including choosing the right bathing suit and sunscreen; surviving in dangerous weather conditions, currents, and waves; confronting various marine organisms; treating ailments, such as being stung or bitten, and much more. Cox calls upon Navy SEAL training materials and instructors’ knowledge of open water swimming and safety procedures to guide her research. In addition, first-hand anecdotes from SEAL specialists and stories of Cox’s own experiences serve as both warnings and proper practices to adopt. Open Water Swimming Manual provides a wealth of knowledge for all swimmers, from seasoned triathletes and expert swimmers to beginners exploring open water swimming for the first time. It is, as well, the first manual of its kind to make use of oceanography, marine biology, and to weave in stories about the successes and failures of other athletes, giving us a deeper, broader understanding of this exhilarating and fast growing sport.

Open Water Swimming Manual: An Expert's Survival Guide for Triathletes and Open Water Swimmers

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Exercise & Fitness

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

• At age fourteen, she swam twenty-six miles from Catalina Island to the California mainland. • At ages fifteen and sixteen, she broke the men’s and women’s world records for swimming the English Channel—a thirty-three-mile crossing in nine hours, thirty-six minutes. • At eighteen, she swam the twenty-mile Cook Strait between North and South Islands of New Zealand, was caught on a massive swell, found herself after five hours farther from the finish than when she started, and still completed the swim. • She was the first to swim the Strait of Magellan, the most treacherous three-mile stretch of water in the world. • The first to swim the Bering Strait—the channel that forms the boundary line between the United States and Russia—from Alaska to Siberia, thereby opening the U.S.-Soviet border for the first time in forty-eight years, swimming in thirty-eight-degree water in four-foot waves without a shark cage, wet suit, or lanolin grease. • The first to swim the Cape of Good Hope (a shark emerged from the kelp, its jaws wide open, and was shot as it headed straight for her). In this extraordinary book, the world’s most extraordinary distance swimmer writes about her emotional and spiritual need to swim and about the almost mystical act of swimming itself. Lynne Cox trained hard from age nine, working with an Olympic coach, swimming five to twelve miles each day in the Pacific. At age eleven, she swam even when hail made the water “like cold tapioca pudding” and was told she would one day swim the English Channel. Four years later—not yet out of high school—she broke the men’s and women’s world records for the Channel swim. In 1987, she swam the Bering Strait from America to the Soviet Union—a feat that, according to Gorbachev, helped diminish tensions between Russia and the United States. Lynne Cox’s relationship with the water is almost mystical: she describes swimming as flying, and remembers swimming at night through flocks of flying fish the size of mockingbirds, remembers being escorted by a pod of dolphins that came to her off New Zealand. She has a photographic memory of her swims. She tells us how she conceived of, planned, and trained for each, and re-creates for us the experience of swimming (almost) unswimmable bodies of water, including her most recent astonishing one-mile swim to Antarctica in thirty-two-degree water without a wet suit. She tells us how, through training and by taking advantage of her naturally plump physique, she is able to create more heat in the water than she loses. Lynne Cox has swum the Mediterranean, the three-mile Strait of Messina, under the ancient bridges of Kunning Lake, below the old summer palace of the emperor of China in Beijing. Breaking records no longer interests her. She writes about the ways in which these swims instead became vehicles for personal goals, how she sees herself as the lone swimmer among the waves, pitting her courage against the odds, drawn to dangerous places and treacherous waters that, since ancient times, have challenged sailors in ships.

Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer

World-renowned swimmer and bestselling author Lynne Cox and Caldecott Medal-winning illustrator Brian Floca team up to bring us this inspiring story of an elephant seal who knew exactly where she belonged. Here is the incredible story of Elizabeth, a real-life elephant seal who made her home in the Avon River in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. When Elizabeth decides to stretch out across a two-lane road, the citizens worry she might get hurt or cause traffic accidents, so a group of volunteers tows her out to sea. But Elizabeth swims all the way back to Christchurch. The volunteers catch her again and again—each time towing her farther, even hundreds of miles away—but, still, Elizabeth finds her way back home. Includes back matter with information about elephant seals.

Elizabeth, Queen of the Seas

Children's Books

Animals

Schwartz & Wade

World-renowned swimmer and bestselling author Lynne Cox and Caldecott Medal-winning illustrator Brian Floca team up to bring us this inspiring story of an elephant seal who knew exactly where she belonged. Here is the incredible story of Elizabeth, a real-life elephant seal who made her home in the Avon River in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. When Elizabeth decides to stretch out across a two-lane road, the citizens worry she might get hurt or cause traffic accidents, so a group of volunteers tows her out to sea. But Elizabeth swims all the way back to Christchurch. The volunteers catch her again and again—each time towing her farther, even hundreds of miles away—but, still, Elizabeth finds her way back home. Includes back matter with information about elephant seals. From the Hardcover edition.

“This book is as autobiographical as it is biographical . . . a book that juxtaposes two adventurers, one with her own challenges still unfolding and the other with his position fixed in history . . . a book worthy of the centenary celebration of Amundsen’s trek to the South Pole.”—San Francisco Chronicle Today the North and South Poles are home to research stations and film crews, but just a century ago they were forbidding lands seldom seen by human eyes. Those who journeyed there were the last true explorers, and one of the most successful ever was Roald Amundsen. Known as “the last of the Vikings,” the Norwegian-born Amundsen began his career of adventure at age fifteen and by forty had become the first man to successfully navigate the Northwest Passage, and to reach both the North and South Poles. As a girl, Lynne Cox read of Amundsen’s exploits, which inspired her to follow her own adventurous dreams of open-water swimming. Here, she gives an account of Amundsen’s life and expeditions while detailing her own experiences swimming (without a wetsuit) in the same polar regions he first explored. At once a biography, history, and memoir, South with the Sun holds something for any lover of adventure. “Not to miss . . . It's fascinating to read about the Norwegian hardman through the eyes of Cox.”—Outside

South With The Sun: Roald Amundsen, His Polar Explorations, and the Quest for Discovery

Historical

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cox, Lynne. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Cox, Lynne

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cox, Lynne. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Swimming To Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer

Grayson

Grayson

Grayson (Spanish Edition)

South with the Sun: Roald Amundsen, His Polar Explorations, and the Quest for Discovery

Open Water Swimming Manual: An Expert's Survival Guide for Triathletes and Open Water Swimmers

Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer

Elizabeth, Queen of the Seas

Elizabeth, Queen of the Seas

South With The Sun: Roald Amundsen, His Polar Explorations, and the Quest for Discovery