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 f...

The author describes her real-life adventure when, while training for a long-distance swim off the coast of California, she encounters a baby gray whale that had become separated from its mother and had been following her instead, and...