What do you think?
Rate this book
The Plunge: Maverick Swimmers, an Unlikely Quest, and the Transformative Power of Cold Water
Born to Run meets Why We Swim and Breath in a globe-spanning work of immersive narrative nonfiction that dives into the hidden world of cold water plunging and swimming—and what it reveals about the human body, mind, and need for connection.
When award-winning Sports Illustrated writer Chris Ballard receives a cryptic text promising to extend his athletic life, he has no idea it will lead him into a parallel athletic universe—one populated by record-breaking grandmothers, obsessive scientists, rogue visionaries chasing Olympic legitimacy, and everyday people willingly plunging into freezing water together, a realm that subverts the idea of what “elite” athletes are supposed to look like. What begins as curiosity becomes a three-year reporting journey across continents, from the saunas of Finland and seas of Ireland to Norway, England, and Boston.
Blending adventure journalism with rigorous research, The Plunge traces humanity’s long relationship with cold water—from the ancient Greeks and Victorian sea bathers to polar plungers and modern laboratories studying stress, resilience, and mental health, a lifeline for those “drowning on dry land.” Reporting from the front lines of emerging science, Ballard explores how brief, voluntary cold exposure can sharpen focus, elevate mood, reduce inflammation, stunt cortisol, and retrain the body’s stress response, creating a rare state of being both calm and alert.
Along the way, Ballard introduces pioneers like legendary distance swimmer Lynne Cox, follows Ram Barkai’s improbable quest to bring ice swimming to the Olympics, and charts a global movement that’s surged from fringe ritual to mainstream phenomenon. As his reporting deepens, so does his Ballard graduates from cold plunges to competing alongside Olympians at the Ice Swimming World Championships. Along the way, his body and outlook change in surprising and measurable ways.
Unfolding through vivid scenes and unforgettable characters, The Plunge is a story of endurance, science, and human connection, an exploration of why, in a climate-controlled, screen-saturated world, so many people are choosing to seek out discomfort -- and what becomes possible when we do hard things together.
When award-winning Sports Illustrated writer Chris Ballard receives a cryptic text promising to extend his athletic life, he has no idea it will lead him into a parallel athletic universe—one populated by record-breaking grandmothers, obsessive scientists, rogue visionaries chasing Olympic legitimacy, and everyday people willingly plunging into freezing water together, a realm that subverts the idea of what “elite” athletes are supposed to look like. What begins as curiosity becomes a three-year reporting journey across continents, from the saunas of Finland and seas of Ireland to Norway, England, and Boston.
Blending adventure journalism with rigorous research, The Plunge traces humanity’s long relationship with cold water—from the ancient Greeks and Victorian sea bathers to polar plungers and modern laboratories studying stress, resilience, and mental health, a lifeline for those “drowning on dry land.” Reporting from the front lines of emerging science, Ballard explores how brief, voluntary cold exposure can sharpen focus, elevate mood, reduce inflammation, stunt cortisol, and retrain the body’s stress response, creating a rare state of being both calm and alert.
Along the way, Ballard introduces pioneers like legendary distance swimmer Lynne Cox, follows Ram Barkai’s improbable quest to bring ice swimming to the Olympics, and charts a global movement that’s surged from fringe ritual to mainstream phenomenon. As his reporting deepens, so does his Ballard graduates from cold plunges to competing alongside Olympians at the Ice Swimming World Championships. Along the way, his body and outlook change in surprising and measurable ways.
Unfolding through vivid scenes and unforgettable characters, The Plunge is a story of endurance, science, and human connection, an exploration of why, in a climate-controlled, screen-saturated world, so many people are choosing to seek out discomfort -- and what becomes possible when we do hard things together.
320 pages, Hardcover
Published June 9, 2026
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 11, 2026
We are only one week into June and yet Chris Ballard has already shut down the competition for best book of the summer. What sets The Plunge apart is that it's a genuinely practical wellness book and a hilarious adventure story wrapped into one. Mr. Ballard distills the emerging science of cold water swimming into usable takeaways, noting how brief, voluntary cold exposure can sharpen focus, lift mood, reduce inflammation, and retrain the body's stress response, alongside clear eyed guidance on how to do it safely. But none of this comes in the form of a lecture. Instead, the advice is encased in a fascinating story that runs from the ancient Greeks and Victorian sea bathers to modern labs and Olympic-hopeful ice swimmers, populated by captivating eccentrics: record breaking grandmothers, rogue visionaries, and pioneers like Lynne Cox.
The sine qua non of the book's charm, though, is Ballard himself, who wades right in as a skeptical aging athlete who gets a cryptic text and tumbles down the rabbit hole, eventually competing at the Ice Swimming World Championships. We learn as he learns and shiver as he shivers, and his willingness to take the plunge on behalf of the reader makes him the perfect guide. It's also laugh-out-loud funny. Ballard mines his own discomfort and the sheer absurdity of the whole enterprise for all it's worth. The result is that rare wellness book you'd happily read even if you never plan to get wet.
The sine qua non of the book's charm, though, is Ballard himself, who wades right in as a skeptical aging athlete who gets a cryptic text and tumbles down the rabbit hole, eventually competing at the Ice Swimming World Championships. We learn as he learns and shiver as he shivers, and his willingness to take the plunge on behalf of the reader makes him the perfect guide. It's also laugh-out-loud funny. Ballard mines his own discomfort and the sheer absurdity of the whole enterprise for all it's worth. The result is that rare wellness book you'd happily read even if you never plan to get wet.
June 21, 2026
I’ve been swimming for three winter seasons in Long Island Sound. This is the first book that captures the joy and camaraderie of getting in cold water, and the jubilant craziness that is the Memphremagog Ice Swimming festival in Newport (shout out to my friend S. for her third place finish in the hat contest for the ice we need.)
I learned so much from this book about the history of ice swimming, its organizing bodies and quest for athletic legitimacy, and the emerging science around a wide variety of medical and psychological benefits from cold water immersion. Highly recommend The Plunge to both swimmers and the cold water curious.
I learned so much from this book about the history of ice swimming, its organizing bodies and quest for athletic legitimacy, and the emerging science around a wide variety of medical and psychological benefits from cold water immersion. Highly recommend The Plunge to both swimmers and the cold water curious.
Review of advance copy
I'm a Boston snowplow driver, so I get more than my fill of being cold/frozen to death each winter. Unless it's a heat wave, why would I willingly take a freezing cold shower, let alone swim in Boston Harbor in freaking March (as some do in the book?) But a friend gave me The Plunge to read, and man, it's very good – too good, actually, as I am now “attempting” to take aforementioned showers (at least, to the count of 30.) The science is very interesting, and Ballard does a great job pulling together numerous studies/experiments/stories into a cohesive primer on potential cold-water benefits, probably the first person to do that. He also does a great job explaining what cold/ice water swimming feels like because he himself is the guinea pig, writing first hand about going to upstate Vermont on a day the wind chill was minus 3 degrees and jumping, knees knocking, into a swimming pool carved into a frozen lake, with ice chunks bobbing in the water, and all he's got on is a speedo. Absolutely crazy... but a very fun read. His George Plympton-style dive into the world of ice water sports provides a great narrative, but so, too, does the companion tale he spins about the oddball pioneers who for years have been nuts about ice water swimming (pun intended,) and their noble attempt to take it mainstream. Or at the very least, to make it seem a bit less crazy to the outside world. I won't spoil the ending, but if I found myself on a wicked cold Boston Harbor beach next winter, just maybe, I'd stick my toe in.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Five stars. A beautifully written plunge into a world I didn't know I wanted to understand.
I came to this book knowing nothing about cold water swimming, and Chris Ballard had me hooked within a few pages. He is one of those rare writers who can make you feel the shock of the water and then, a paragraph later, explain the science of what that cold is doing to your body without ever talking down to you. The balance is remarkable. History, physiology, and reporting all braided together, and somehow it never feels like a lecture.
What stayed with me, though, were the people. Ram Barkai and his quixotic, improbable campaign to drag ice swimming toward Olympic legitimacy gives the book a real engine. Lynne Cox is a force. And Ballard keeps finding these unforgettable characters, many of them carrying genuine loss and trauma, who have found something like healing in freezing water and in each other. That community, the way these oddballs locate and hold one another up, is the most moving thing in the book. It takes what could read as rich-person thrill-seeking and turns it into something deeper about how human beings cope and connect.
And then there is Ballard himself, who does not just report on this world but wades into it, eventually racing alongside Olympians. The first-person sections are the heart of the thing. Funny, vulnerable, and quietly profound.
Engrossing, generous, and gorgeously written. I tore through it.
I came to this book knowing nothing about cold water swimming, and Chris Ballard had me hooked within a few pages. He is one of those rare writers who can make you feel the shock of the water and then, a paragraph later, explain the science of what that cold is doing to your body without ever talking down to you. The balance is remarkable. History, physiology, and reporting all braided together, and somehow it never feels like a lecture.
What stayed with me, though, were the people. Ram Barkai and his quixotic, improbable campaign to drag ice swimming toward Olympic legitimacy gives the book a real engine. Lynne Cox is a force. And Ballard keeps finding these unforgettable characters, many of them carrying genuine loss and trauma, who have found something like healing in freezing water and in each other. That community, the way these oddballs locate and hold one another up, is the most moving thing in the book. It takes what could read as rich-person thrill-seeking and turns it into something deeper about how human beings cope and connect.
And then there is Ballard himself, who does not just report on this world but wades into it, eventually racing alongside Olympians. The first-person sections are the heart of the thing. Funny, vulnerable, and quietly profound.
Engrossing, generous, and gorgeously written. I tore through it.
Review of advance copy received from Author
I'm a skeptic of popular health and wellness trends, so the idea of a book about cold-water swimming didn't naturally appeal to me. Yet, having read much of Chris Ballard's work over the years, I knew his take on the ice swimming and the community of cold plungers and swimmers would brim with intriguing characters and vivid descriptions without losing a healthy skepticism of outsized fad-ish claims. As expected, "The Plunge" delivered. It's a rollicking tale of colorful people in a heartfelt community with a sizable dose of true crazy, but it deftly integrates science and history in ways that, for a reader like me, made the idea of a cold plunge far more appealing.
That Ballard wove all this within a compelling account of his own ice swimming adventures gave it an especially personal feel. After finishing the book, I still chuckled a bit at characters like Ram Barkai and Lynne Cox, but I also felt compelled to meet them – and, yes, to jump into a body of way-too-freakin-cold water with them. Maybe afterward, we'd sit by a heater cranked to 11, and they'd tell us some of the stories that were too crazy for the book.
That Ballard wove all this within a compelling account of his own ice swimming adventures gave it an especially personal feel. After finishing the book, I still chuckled a bit at characters like Ram Barkai and Lynne Cox, but I also felt compelled to meet them – and, yes, to jump into a body of way-too-freakin-cold water with them. Maybe afterward, we'd sit by a heater cranked to 11, and they'd tell us some of the stories that were too crazy for the book.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Full disclosure: I hated the ice bucket challenge. And I'm very unlikely to enter a swimming pool if it's below 70 degrees. But I am very glad I took The Plunge.
The Plunge takes us around the world — World Championships in Molveno, Italy, saunas in Finland, the Irish sea, Norway, England, DC, and Boston -- and immerses us in a series of overlapping narratives that will certainly appeal to a far broader audience than ice swimming masochists or the cold water curious.
That is because Ballard is a master of storytelling. Whether it's through his own perspective as someone relatively new to the fascinating world of ice swimming, his exhaustive research, the telling details that make his characters indelible, or the transcendent themes of camaraderie, resilience, and the pursuit of self-fulfillment -- this book has something for everybody because it is grounded in what makes us human.
I couldn't put it down.
The Plunge takes us around the world — World Championships in Molveno, Italy, saunas in Finland, the Irish sea, Norway, England, DC, and Boston -- and immerses us in a series of overlapping narratives that will certainly appeal to a far broader audience than ice swimming masochists or the cold water curious.
That is because Ballard is a master of storytelling. Whether it's through his own perspective as someone relatively new to the fascinating world of ice swimming, his exhaustive research, the telling details that make his characters indelible, or the transcendent themes of camaraderie, resilience, and the pursuit of self-fulfillment -- this book has something for everybody because it is grounded in what makes us human.
I couldn't put it down.
Review of advance copy received from Author
I love this book! At its heart, it is a great adventure story. The author takes a compelling journey as he learns about a sport, community, and health hack that most people will be surprised actually exists.
I knew nothing about ice swimming, but connected immediately with the adventure of pushing yourself to do something uncomfortable, clearly beneficial, and amazing. I became a runner years after I had any real chance at being good at it. The challenge of testing what my body was capable of kept my attention. One of my favorite books is Christopher McDougall's 'Born to Run'. This book has many of the same elements, is extremely well written, and is a complete joy to read.
I like taking my time while reading something that I love, but I could not put this down. My recommendation for this book comes with a warning. You will likely start turning your showers to cold water for as long as you can stand it, and be researching cold plunge tubs before you finish reading this book.
I knew nothing about ice swimming, but connected immediately with the adventure of pushing yourself to do something uncomfortable, clearly beneficial, and amazing. I became a runner years after I had any real chance at being good at it. The challenge of testing what my body was capable of kept my attention. One of my favorite books is Christopher McDougall's 'Born to Run'. This book has many of the same elements, is extremely well written, and is a complete joy to read.
I like taking my time while reading something that I love, but I could not put this down. My recommendation for this book comes with a warning. You will likely start turning your showers to cold water for as long as you can stand it, and be researching cold plunge tubs before you finish reading this book.
May 17, 2026
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy of The Plunge. This is an excellent dive into the world of cold plunging and ice swimming. Living in Maine, I see the world of plunging firsthand and this may have given me the courage I need to inch my way to plunging. It describes itself as “Born to Run” for this world and I think that’s accurate, an informative and yet easy and accessible read.
June 2, 2026
An extremely well researched & inspirational book on a fascinating subject. As someone who really enjoyed “Born to Run” I think comparing these books is very reasonable. Definitely a great read for athletes of all kinds.
Big thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for allowing me to enjoy this.
Big thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for allowing me to enjoy this.
Review of advance copy received from Author
I loved this book and its story-telling even though cold water swimming is not my thing.
The Plunge is more than a cool read, it is cold hard superlative non-fiction written by one of the best in the business. Immerse yourself in the history and characters and potential of cold water exposure.
The Plunge is more than a cool read, it is cold hard superlative non-fiction written by one of the best in the business. Immerse yourself in the history and characters and potential of cold water exposure.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews