Whales thrill humans, and they always have.

The easy day-trip thrill of watching whales. The terrifying thrill of hunting whales. The ancient thrill of contemplating a creature of size beyond imagining. Even of being swallowed whole.

Philip Hoare caught whale fever in the pages of “Moby Dick,” the giant skeletons of museum display and the sight of giant humpbacks breaching.

He ended up mid-Atlantic, swimming face to face with a sperm whale, overwhelmed by all the leviathan has meant and means today.

This hour, On Point: A tale of whales.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Philip Hoare joins us from New York. He’s author of “The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea” and writer and presenter of the BBC documentary “The Hunt for Moby-Dick.” He’s also the author of five previous works of nonfiction, including “Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant,” “Noel Coward: A Biography,” and “England’s Lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia.”

You can read an excerpt from “The Whale” at HarperCollins.com.

Originally broadcast: May 5, 2009

The legendary Gourmet magazine is going away, a victim of the recession. But its longtime editor-in-chief, famed food writer Ruth Reichl, works on.

We talked with Reichl before Gourmet was shuttered about her mom. Ruth Reichl’s mother was anything but a gourmet.

The daughter savors a larger-than-life career. The mother suffered a mid-20th-century woman’s life of frustration. She inspired not as example, but as counter-example. This year, Ruth looked back in appreciation.

This hour, in an archive edition of On Point: Ruth Reichl and “Not Becoming My Mother.”

Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Ruth Reichl joins us from Toronto. Her memoir is “Not Becoming My Mother & Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way.”  Longtime editor in chief of Gourmet magazine, and a former restaurant critic for The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, she is a co-producer for the public television show “Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie.”

Read the first chapter of “Not Becoming My Mother.”

Anne Roiphe. Photo by Katie Roiphe

Post your comments below

Everything changed for author Anne Roiphe when she lost her husband of nearly forty years to a heart attack in 2005.

From cooking for one, to hailing cabs, to unlocking her own front door, she had to piece together the practical mechanics of a new life — all while struggling with a grief that seemed unbearable at times.

In her new memoir, “Epilogue,” Roiphe documents the day-to-day challenges of widowhood and her cautious quest for new love.

This hour, On Point: Anne Roiphe on love, loss, and a life remade.

Have you lost a spouse, a partner? What did you have to relearn? Share your thoughts, and join the conversation.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Joining us from New York City is acclaimed author Anne Roiphe. Since her first book was published in 1967, she has written nine novels and three memoirs, as well as essays and reviews for The New York Times, Vogue, The Guardian, and many other publications. Her latest book is “Epilogue: A Memoir.”

Also joining us is Brian de Vries, professor of gerontology at San Francisco State University and an expert on grief, bereavement, and widowhood.

When Nicholas Dawidoff was a boy in nineteen-seventies’ New Haven, Connecticut, Red Sox radio broadcasts from a distant Fenway Park filled his room at night.

As he writes in his new memoir, “men like Williams and Yazstremski … were knights errant, giant killers, young men of magical valor roaming through the American League.” They were also roaming through his imagination and standing in for the mentally ill father he saw only occasionally.

The Red Sox of the 1970s were the team of near misses and lost chances, the team that couldn’t win. That suited Dawidoff just fine. “I had come to believe,” he writes, “that nothing worthwhile comes without great suffering.” So it was with his favorite baseball team, and so it was with his childhood.

This hour: A tale of love, madness, and baseball, with Nicholas Dawidoff.

You can join the conversation. Is it only a game, or is baseball an allegory for wins and losses of every day life? Why is it that we root for the underdog on the playing field, but not in life?

-Jane Clayson, guest host

* * *

Guest:

Joining us from New York is Nicholas Dawidoff. His new book, a memoir, is “The Crowd Sounds Happy: A Story of Love, Madness and Baseball.”
His previous books include “The Catcher Was A Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg,” “In the Country of Country: A Journey to the Roots of American Music,” and “The Fly Swatter: How My Grandfather Made his Way in the World.”

You can read an excerpt from “The Crowd Sounds Happy” at RandomHouse.com.

On a cold, winter morning, almost twenty years ago, Joan Wickersham’s father shot himself. No one saw it coming. And no one could fathom why he did it.

In her new memoir, Wickersham, an accomplished novelist, revisits her father’s suicide.

Probing his death from every angle, she struggles to understand how the man she once loved and adored could take his own life.

She also tries to unravel the mystery of his suicide while coming to terms with the fact that she might never understand it.

This hour, On Point: family secrets, a father’s suicide, and the search for answers.

You can join the conversation. Have you experienced a similar tragedy in your family? How did you cope with the mystery and loss?

- Jane Clayson, guest host

*  *  *

Guests:

Joining us in the studio is Joan Wickersham. She’s an award-winning short story writer and author of the novel, “The Paper Anniversary.” Her new memoir, out today, is called “The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order.” (Read an excerpt from the book.)

Joining us from New York is Dr. Paula Clayton, Medical Director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. For almost 20 years, she served as Professor and Head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine.

The Warning Signs of Suicide

• Observable signs of serious depression:

1. Unrelenting low mood
2. Pessimism
3. Hopelessness
4. Desperation
5. Anxiety, psychic pain and inner tension
6. Withdrawal
7. Sleep problems

• Increased alcohol and/or other drug use
• Recent impulsiveness and taking unnecessary risks
• Threatening suicide or expressing a strong wish to die
• Unexpected rage or anger
• Feeling trapped – like there’s no way out
• Experiencing dramatic mood changes
• Making a plan:

1. Giving away prized possessions
2. Sudden or impulsive purchase of a firearm
3. Obtaining other means of killing oneself such as poisons or medications

(as provided by the websites of The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline)

Rick Bragg's father, Charles Bragg (left), on the cover of "The Prince of Frogtown."

Post your comments below

Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and Southern writer Rick Bragg writes memoirs that read like music — Southern music that he makes powerfully universal.

In his bestselling memoir “All Over but the Shoutin’,” Bragg told the story of his heroic mother raising a family on her own in Deep South poverty. In “Ava’s Man,” he reached deeper into family history and lore. In his new memoir, “The Prince of Frogtown,” he aims at the man who brought a world of hurt to everyone else in his family — his own father.

For a long time, Bragg didn’t want to talk about his father. His mother, yes. His sainted Southern grandfather, “Ava’s man,” yes. But his father — a proud, mean, too-often drunken man? Not until now.

“The devil lives in Alabama,” Bragg writes in the new memoir, “and swims in a Mason jar.” In “The Prince of Frogtown,” he paints a picture of a hard, complicated, and ultimately tragic figure. He looks at his own fathering instincts, and the history and lore of his hometown of Jacksonville, Alabama.

This hour, author Rick Bragg on one mean daddy — his own.

Have you read Rick Bragg’s books? Do they inspire you to look harder at your home turf? At your own family history, even the tough parts? When a father hurts a mother, badly, is there room for forgiveness?

Join the coversation, right here.

-Tom Ashbrook

* * *

Guest:

Rick Bragg joins us from Mobile, Alabama. He’s an award-winning journalist who currently teaches at the University of Alabama. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for his work at The New York Times, and twice received a Distinguished Writing Award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

You can read an excerpt from “The Prince of Frogtown,” the latest in his series of Southern memoirs.