Biographile’s This Week in History remembers events of the past, and the icons that set them in motion.

On May 23, 1934, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were gunned down by two squads of state police while cruising through Louisiana in a stolen car. The facts of their death are clear, but our memory of the two notorious criminals is a conflicted one. They force us to reconcile the pride we take in rebelling against conformity, with our natural disapproval of violence that can accompany such rebellion.

Remembering the past, after all, is an exercise in wiping our rose-tinted glasses. The prototypical cowboy, for instance, may have been a lawless, grungy, trigger-friendly hothead. But his legacy -- what society remembers of him -- falls in line with that of America's: brave, independent, pioneering, righteous. Lone rangers on both sides of the law have lucked out. Their violence and their unpredictability are forgotten, while their rebel charm remains. So when you have two law-breakers, one a woman, the other dependent on her love to hoodwink "the man," it's hard to look past their tragically beautiful waywardness to see the truth: Bonnie and Clyde were dangerous criminals.

For much of the early 1930s, the couple robbed banks and stores with the Barrow Gang, Clyde's posse of corrupt friends and family members. The public image of the lethal lovebirds remained positive, all while state and federal police beefed up their manpower to bust their operation once and for all. In January 1934, Bonnie and Clyde shot up the Eastham Prison Farm in Texas to help a fellow gang member escape, killing one officer in the process. It was just another notch on the belt; roughly thirteen people, including nine officers, are believe to have been killed at the hands of the Barrow clan.

After police ambushed the two on a Louisiana back-road on May 23, riddling their car and bodies with bullet holes, their deaths were mourned by the masses. Like a 20th-century Jesse James, the killers have gone down as martyrs, advocating a spirit of independence. To be fair, it's hard to look beyond the mythic beauty and idealism of the couple, especially when the media butts in. Hollywood has helped enshrine the romanticism of their legacy by casting the heart-throbbing Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty to depict the troubled duo. But for a more balanced look at the star-crossed lovers, pick up Jeff Guin's revealing biography Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde.

When Gene Rodenberry had the idea to transpose classic TV Westerns into a science fiction universe, did he guess his creation would spawn six TV series, a dozen films, and the undying devotion of generations of fans? And if he did, did he respond with pure Klingon rationality, or did he experience a bit of human glee?

This weekend, eager Trekkies will be lining up to catch early screenings of the latest movie, "Star Trek Into Darkness," which once again pits the crew of Starship Enterprise against forces of otherworldly evil. As they happily munch their popcorn, young viewers may not even know that the series is nearly 50 years old, or that Zachary Quinto is not the original Spock. For a look at Star Trek memories from the first generation of cast members and beyond, beam up these memoirs and biographies of all things Trek.

The Encyclopedia Shatnerica by Robert Schnackenberg

He went where no man had gone before. William Shatner, the original Captain James T. Kirk, did not achieve superstardom when Star Trek aired for three seasons, and after the show’s cancellation, was forced to live in his truck and scrounge for acting gigs. But once Star Trek became a cult hit in syndication, Shatner’s career was set, and he went on to star in T.J. Hooker and become a pitchman for Priceline.  Throughout, he made no attempt to hide his contempt for the Trekkies who made him a star, advising them to get an (Earthbound) life. In this biography, writer Schnackenberg looks at the man who was Kirk, and became a cult hero.

To the Stars by George Takei

He was named for King George, but his family spent time in a Japanese internment camp when he was four years old. This early, bitter experience didn’t stop young George Takei from pursuing his version of the American Dream – namely, to become an actor, at a time when few Asian faces were seen on TV or film. He would go on to star as Mr. Sulu in the original Star Trek, a role he’d reprise in six of the films. In this memoir, he writes about his experiences growing up in Los Angeles, his lasting devotion to the Trekkies (he regularly appears at conventions) and his life beyond the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton

If Wil Wheaton considers himself a geek, he has plenty of fans who think the term is a high compliment, if not a boast. Wheaton played Ensign Wesley Crusher on Star Trek the Next Generation, which aired from 1987-1994. He’d first achieved fame in the movie Stand By Me, but once Star Trek was cancelled, found himself floundering. Salvation came in an not-entirely-unlikely place: the internet, where he established himself as a blogger and online celebrity. In this memoir, he describes his journey from Hollywood, to deep space, to Topeka, Kansas, where he makes peace with his inescapable Star Trek alter ego and discovers his own identity.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Watching Star Trek by Dave Marinaccio

According to writer Dave Marinaccio, “every situation you will face in life has already been faced by the crew of the Starship Enterprise.” So where else to look for wisdom than the experiences of Spock, Kirk, Sulu, and the rest? In this humorous memoir, Marinaccio applies Trekian logic to all the great questions of life – relationships, career, family, mortality, and how to lose a beer belly. If you think the premise for this book is slim, remember it is based on the best-seller All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Kindergarten lasts just a year, but the Star Trek franchise is still going strong, so there must be some wisdom in there somewhere.

On May 16, 1929, in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, a tradition was born: the Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the previous years’ best films, directors, and actors. The ceremony showed that the movie business was in transition, as Warner Bros. studio was recognized for its outstanding achievement in producing Al Jolson’s “The Jazz Singer,” the first full-length “talkie.” Within a few years, the silent movie business would give way entirely to sound, and in 1934 the Motion Picture Association of America began enforcing the Hays Code, intended to clean up the louche image and loose morals of 1920s Hollywood. Those early years of experiment and excess generated some of the all-time great life stories; here are our picks for eight of the best books on the studio era.

Jeanine Basinger’s The Star Machine explores where icons like Chaplin, Pickford, and their heirs came from: how the studio system produced, shaped, and exploited them, and how fame affected their lives and careers. Structured around case studies of dazzling and disobedient stars like Tyrone Power, Lana Turner, and Loretta Young, Basinger’s richly illustrated biographical study shows how actors were groomed, primped, polished, and presented to a public insatiably hungry for new screen idols.

Lyle Talbot’s life followed the trajectory of early twentieth-century American popular entertainment: After leaving home as a teenager to join a traveling carnival, Talbot became a stage actor, a Warner Bros. film star, and eventually a cast member of television shows including "Leave it to Beaver." In her acclaimed biography, The Entertainer, Talbot’s daughter Margaret uses her father’s extraordinary story to explore the changing landscape of American mass culture as it evolved from small-town sideshows, through the glamour of movie palaces, to the domestic comforts of the small screen.

Born Gladys Smith in Toronto in 1892, Mary Pickford was a child stage actress who was spotted by D.W. Griffith and invited to join his Biograph film company at the age of seventeen. After becoming a beloved fixture in silent film, Pickford began to exert more control over her career as the producer of her own movies, and in 1919 -- along with Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, and her husband Douglas Fairbanks -- Pickford founded United Artists, cementing the power of producers and on-screen talent in Hollywood. Eileen Whitfield’s illuminating biography, Mary Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood, reveals Pickford’s tough upbringing, her years of stardom, and her lasting influence on the film industry.

Few actors could match Mary Pickford’s fame in her day, but her United Artists co-founder Charlie Chaplin was one such star. His modestly self-titled autobiography, first published in 1964, is a standout of the genre: witty, revealing, and full of outlandish tales that may play fast and loose with the truth (like the one about foiling Japanese assassins), but they are so infectiously told, the reader hardly cares.

Harpo Marx, the brother who never spoke, was an off-screen charmer and bon vivant. His memoir Harpo Speaks! is cherished by Marx fans for its breezy style and insight into the professional and social whirl of the 1920s and 1930s. Harpo was a friend of critic Alexander Woollcott and a member of the glamorous, cynical circle at the Algonquin Round Table in New York, but he was also devoted to his wife, actress Susan Fleming, and their four adopted children (he was the only Marx brother never to divorce). His memoir, published shortly before he died in 1964, is a touching and unpretentious tale of talent, fame, and family, enlivened by the Marx Brothers’ signature offbeat wit.

The inimitable silent film actress Louise Brooks opens up in Lulu in Hollywood -- a series of autobiographical essays on her life, career, and struggles against the constraints of the studio system. One of the most famous faces of her day, Brooks escaped the claustrophobic Hollywood scene for Weimar, Germany, where she made "Pandora’s Box" and "Diary of a Lost Girl" with the renowned avant-garde director G. W. Pabst -- a move for which she was unofficially blacklisted in Los Angeles. The films, which included frank depictions of such taboo topics as prostitution, illegitimacy, and lesbianism, remain classics of the silent era, but it wasn’t until the 1950s that Brooks was recognized as an icon in her own right.

In the years between the first Oscars ceremony and the enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934, Hollywood films freely depicted women behaving badly, talking dirty, and making their own way in the world. In his survey Complicated Women, Mick LaSalle focuses on the female stars whose antics on and off the screen scandalized America, as their characters took lovers, enjoyed careers and sex, had babies outside marriage, and stood up to cheating husbands. He shows how stars like Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and Mae West shocked and seduced their audiences during a brief golden age for women on screen.

The prolific film critic and historian David Thomson has written biographies of stars including Orson Welles and Marlon Brando, as well as the mammoth New Biographical Dictionary of Film, and is one of the most skillful chroniclers of America’s love affair with the movies. In The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood, he offers a sweeping yet intensely personal narrative of the business and art of cinema, from its early days to its modern machinations, and of the personalities that drove its development.

Martin Short will write a memoir for publishing house HarperCollins, making this the first book he will write, as well as read from start to finish: “Although I've never read a book all the way through, I’m sure excited to write one,” he says. His tale will wander through the comedic years he spent as a SCTV and“Saturday Night Live” cast member -- where he created characters like eccentric man-child Ed Grimley, as well as impressions of Mick Jagger and Katherine Hepburn -- on through his thirty-year marriage, and his Hollywood friends. While a title is still forthcoming, publication is set for 2014. [via The New York Times]

Like him or not, tennis great Jimmy Connors's has written a memoir, and it hits stores today. Within its pages, the candid Connors retains his straight-shooting style -- the one that earned him status as one of the sports all-time stars and his wife, Patti, the press title of “saint” for sticking by him through public infidelities and gambling addictions. Connors will also detail his relationship and broken engagement to fellow tennis star Chris Evert, and his now twenty-year-long break from the sport that still celebrates his unique two-fisted backhand as well as his intense lifestyle and professional rivalries. [via Broadway World]

Reese Witherspoon will star in the James Mangold-directed film adaptation of "Three Little Words," a memoir by Ashley Rhodes-Courter about her childhood in the U.S. foster care system. Witherspoon will take the adult lead, playing the volunteer who meets nine-year-old Rhodes-Courter -- already a foster child for five years -- and takes her into her life. With the “Walk the Line” team producing, and with a script by Lewis Colick (“The Fighter”) and Michael Petroni (“The Book Thief”), Rhodes-Courter’s ultimately triumphant story may also earn Witherspoon another round of Oscar attention. [via The Hollywood Reporter]

Aretha Franklin’s life is edging closer to its on-screen debut. In a recent meeting, the Queen of Soul chatted with the likes of Clive Davis and “Ray” director Taylor Hackford in order to put together a roster for her highly anticipated biopic. Possible front runners include Jennifer Hudson and Audra McDonald, who Franklin sees as suitable fits for her vision of the film -- a tall order considering her career that has lasted more than half a century and includes flawless renditions of gospel, jazz, blues, R&B, pop, rock, and funk. [via Triblive]

Biographile’s This Week in History remembers events of the past, and the icons that set them in motion.

This week in history, on May 17, 1954, the landmark Supreme Court case known as Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka was decided. It was this case that unanimously determined racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. This historic victory served not only as the catalyst for integration in public school facilities, but also as a spark behind the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Linda Brown was a young African American girl who was denied acceptance to her local public school in Topeka, Kansas due to the color of her skin. Racial segregation was a policy endorsed by the 1896 Supreme Court Case known as Plessy v Ferguson, which ruled in favor of segregation under the doctrine of "separate but equal." But the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or the NAACP, supported Linda's case, and in 1954, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka reached the Supreme Court. The NAACP's chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall (who was later appointed to the Supreme Court himself) argued on Linda's behalf.

The opinion, which was written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, stated, "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." The high court ruled that the doctrine established by Plessy v Ferguson was unconstitutional as it subordinated African American students. The court appointed the district courts with the task of carrying out desegregation, mandating that it occur "with all deliberate speed."

This case and its decision was a major achievement for the civil rights movement, leading to the eventual desegregation of all public facilities.

The frills and flowers on Mother’s Day cards might make you forget what tough stuff mamas are made of. Every day of the year, mothering is a daunting venture that takes guts, brains and brawn. The five mothers in these books have all followed unique parenting journeys. But the basics remain the same -- they love their kids and they are excited to share in the wild adventures of motherhood.

The Spark by Kristine Barnett

Kristine Barnett was shocked when her son Jacob’s teacher told her not to let him take his alphabet cards to school -- he was never going to learn to read anyway. Barnett knew Jacob had different struggles from the average child. He had been diagnosed with autism at age two, and was passionately interested in letters and patterns around him. And yet, the teacher focused on what Jacob couldn't do, advising Barnett to lower her expectations. Instead, Barnett doubled down on her commitment to her child and determined to help him follow his “spark.”

Despite misgivings from many educational professionals, Barnett engaged her child on his level, beginning with his fascinations. Eventually, she found herself following him down unexpectedly rigorous paths. Barnett’s idea was to ready her son for mainstream kindergarten, but by the time he turned nine, he had already begun working on an original theory in astrophysics. The Spark is a testament to the dedication of mothers who help their children reach their full potential, whatever that might be.

Instant Mom by Nia Vardalos

Nia Vardalos fictionalized the hilarious misadventure of introducing her non-Greek fiancé to her huge, traditional Greek family in her stage show and film My Big Fat Greek Wedding. In real life, Vardalos and her husband Ian Gomez followed up the “I do’s” with attempts to become pregnant. After trying for years, including with two different surrogates, she and Gomez decide to try a different rout to parenting. They consider pursuing private adoption of a newborn when Vardalos learns about foster adoption.

Before long, Vardalos and Gomez are “instant” parents to a three year old girl from the foster care system. Vardalos is her witty self here, but also sincere and serious about her commitment to her child, the challenges of growing into a parent role with an older child, and the need for foster and foster adoptive parents in the United States. Instant Mom shows that there are many paths to parenthood, and even includes a "how-to-adopt" section at the end of the book, for those interested in more resources.

She Looks Just Like You by Amie Klempnauer Miller

Amie Miller was anxiously awaiting the birth of her daughter. It felt a little awkward though, since she wasn’t the pregnant one -- Miller’s partner of 18 years was the biological mother of their child. After her daughter was born, Miller became a stay-at-home mother, and in many ways inhabited a very traditional mommy position. But she struggled to find language to recognize her distinct and separate role in her daughter’s life as a non-biological mother, especially when well-meaning strangers mistakenly complemented her on their physical resemblance. In the end, Miller learns that the realities of parenting steamroll such anxieties. When diapers need changing, the nuances of societal norms take a back seat, and Miller gets down to parenting in earnest.

Atlas of the Human Heart by Ariel Gore

Before Ariel Gore became the founder and editor of the award-winning parenting magazine Hip Mama, she was a wayward teenager, rambling across the globe. A runaway sixteen-year-old, Gore left home in the late '80s to seek adventure and meaning. In her search through communist China, Katmandu, Hong Kong and Amsterdam, she never quite found what she was looking for. Along the way, she picked up Lance, a boyfriend who proved to be simply a new set of problems. Arriving in Italy, he turned abusive.

An unexpected turn of events, however, opened up a wide new world for Ariel, one she didn't have to travel far in order to appreciate its view:  “Bright morning in early June, I already knew I was pregnant. I sat at the bar, nursing a café con leche and my second black eye in as many weeks." Gore finds new purpose in her pregnancy. When she ditches Lance and returns home to California, she is nineteen, a new and intensely focused mother, and would soon after found Hip Mama to begin a fulfilling career in writing.

Up by Patricia Ellis Herr

Trish Herr wanted to introduce her daughter Alex to the great outdoors that she and her husband loved so much. Still, she didn't think she'd have Alex scaling mountains until grade school, at the very least. But when Alex’s boundless energy and curiosity led Herr to consider taking her on grown-up hikes, the five-year-old proved herself more than up to the challenge of scaling peaks. Herr’s lively accounts of parenting on the hiking trails are inspiring. She’s not only teaching her daughter to love nature, but also to love and trust herself, and to remember “that girls can be strong; and that big, bold things are possible."

Jay Gatsby may have been handsome, dashing, and the consummate host, but he wasn't much of a reader. In the party scene in The Great Gatsby, Nick stumbles into Gatsby’s library, where the pages of the impressive collection of books remain uncut. (Another guest approves thoroughly, declaring Gatsby “knew when to stop” in creating the myth of himself as an educated sophisticate.) Odds are, the man born James Gatz would have been much happier in a movie theater, especially in the summer, where he could enjoy all that delicious air conditioning.

The latest movie version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s timeless novel of excess and despair in the Jazz Age opens this weekend, and the party scene is sure to be a highlight, whether Gatsby’s library makes it onscreen or not. If you want the stories behind the story about the self-made tycoon who couldn't stop yearning for that green light at the end of the dock, check out these memoirs and biographies of members of Fitzgerald’s Lost Generation.

Everybody Was So Young by Amanda Vaill

The identities of the real-life Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom may never be known, but Fitzgerald’s inspiration for the couple at the center of another novel, Tender is the Night, is clear: Sara and Gerald Murphy, a glamorous, artistic couple who gallivanted with Picasso on the French Riviera and caroused with Hemingway in Spain. In this biography, Vaill describes the high style and deep sadness that informed the life of the Murphys, along the way taking the reader on a tour of the expat scene in Paris and beyond in the 1920s.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

Stein always claimed this “autobiography,” written in the voice of her life-long partner Alice, was a commercial book she wrote for fun, as a break from her more difficult language experiments. In Alice’s view (but Stein’s words,) Stein is a genius, while Alice is more interested in fashion and cooking. Whether the whole book is a Modernist prank remains open to debate, but the reader will get a detailed view of the Stein-Toklas salon, where the women entertained the cream of 1920s Paris art society, including Cezanne, Matisee, and Picasso.

Zelda by Nancy Milford

Her husband Scott called her “the first American flapper.” Zelda Fitzgerald was a Southern belle, her husband’s muse, and, ultimately, a tragic figure who died in an insane asylum. She was also a novelist in her own right, and in this biography, Milford traces Zelda’s influence on Fitzgerald’s writing, from the images she gave him to the scenes from her diary he stole and inserted into his novels. Their marriage was marred by jealousy, competition, Scott’s drinking, and Zelda’s mental illness, but without it we wouldn’t have The Great Gatsby, just as without Zelda, Scott wouldn’t have had a career.

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway lived in Paris after the First World War with his wife, Hadley, and their son, Jack. He was trying desperately to be a writer, and spent many hours in cafes shaping his craft. He also spent plenty of time with his friend and rival F. Scott Fitzgerald, his occasional patron Getrude Stein, and women who were not his wife.  In this sketch of the city, and the group of expat writers and artists who Stein termed the Lost Generation, Hemingway recalls that heady, heartbreaking time.

The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald

When Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby at the breathtakingly young age of twenty-seven, he was already the author of two novels detailing the desires and peccadillos of his milieu. A decade later, still not yet forty, he was washed up, an alcoholic whose greatest literary achievements were behind him. In this book, which is comprised of a series of personal essays Fitzgerald wrote for Esquire as well as correspondence with fellow Lost Generationers such as Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and T.S. Eliot, the writer describes with lacerating candor the breakdown that followed his early success.

If you've inhaled enough of the weekly “Stars Are Just Like Us!” Us Magazine feature for a lifetime but continue to crave that relatable thrill of learning “They Go Camping!” (as the Duchess of Cambridge roughs it with schoolchildren) and “They Feed Their Kids!” (as Gwen Stefani lunches with her son Zuma in Los Angeles), take a highbrow field trip to the Brooklyn Museum and check out the landmark John Singer Sargent Watercolors exhibition that opened last month and runs through July.

It includes more than ninety works, including several oil paintings, and is part of a yearlong collaborative study by the Brooklyn Museum and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, which will present the same display from October 13, 2013 - January 20, 2014.

Armed with a copy of Stanley Olson’s definitive 1986 biography John Singer Sargent: His Portrait, you’ll have all the context you need to understand, in up-close-and-personal detail, Sargent's midlife transition from celebrated high-society portrait painter to landscape artist working mostly in watercolor, along with his exotic daily escapades.

An international art star born in Italy to American parents in 1856, he trained in Paris and explored widely, often with a group he referred to as his “traveling party.” Here are some highlights of Sargent’s most striking work, with accompanying excerpts from Olson’s biography and little reminders that stars have always been "Just Like Us."

They Like Boats!

“White Ships” (1908), watercolor

“None of his early work revealed a magnetic attraction to portraiture: if anything, the opposite. He preferred to be outdoors. He preferred landscapes. His sketchbooks were full of mountains, boats, seascapes, buildings, not people.”

They Have Wanderlust! 

"In the Alps" (1910), oil on canvas

“After his mother’s death he became restless to a pattern; between 1906 and 1914 he left London for about two months in the late summer for Majorca, Corfu, or the Alps, the Dolomites, the Tyrol, Simplon, and most frequently Italy, especially Venice. These journeys became a sort of Continental Broadway, complete with high-spirited children, days crammed with bathing, games, walks, picnics, and work -- it was outdoor living with a vengeance.”

They Miss the Comforts of Home!

"Bedouins" (circa 1905), transparent watercolor with touches of opaque watercolor on off-white wove paper

“He had to endure untold discomforts in order to see the Bedouins at El Fayoum [Egypt]: the indignity of trying to ride, long hours in the saddle, the heat, dreadful food, and the hardships of sleeping in a tent. But nothing could dampen his curiosity or outmatch his energy.”

They Have Nagging Moms! 

"Paul Helleu Sketching his Wife" (1889), oil on canvas

“Paul Cesar Helleu (1859-1927), himself from Brittany, was amazed at John’s command of French when they met shortly after John came to Paris…At an early age, Helleu displayed two compelling interests that would carry him through life -- art and beautiful women -- and neither was much to his mother’s taste…When he told her he was going to be an artist all the unsavoury images of depravity, indulgence and extravagance loomed up before her, causing her to recoil in forbidding dread.”

New York governor Andrew Cuomo will write his memoir for HarperCollins, to be released in 2014. The son of  Mario Cuomo -- the governor of New York from 1983–1994 -- has promised a "full and frank" story of his roles as a public servant and a father to his three daughters. Cuomo will also address the persistent rumors that he plans a presidential bid in 2016, whether or not political colleague and fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton is planning to do the same. The Governor's book is expected to trump a related one: the publishing house's Cuomo biography by New York Post columnist Fredric U. Dicker that, while still under contract to come out this year, looks to be put on hold instead. [via Christian Science Monitor]

Singer/songwriter Usher has adopted a heavy workout and weight loss routine for his next career move: playing Sugar Ray Leonard in the upcoming "Hands of Stone" biopic on prizefighter Roberto Duran. Due to begin shooting this October, the film will cover Duran's life from one of Panama's poorest neighborhoods to celebrated boxing champ, and his many encounters with Sugar Ray along the way. Usher will also prepare for his role by consulting with his character's real life counterpart, and his previous training will come in handy, too: he says he will rely his dancing experience to mimic the famous boxer's quick stepping and lightening sparring style. [via Contact Music]

Ava Helen Pauling, wife of acclaimed DNA researcher Linus Pauling, will finally have her story told. Mina Carson's Ava Helen Pauling: Partner, Activist, Visionary is based on archives of the letters and papers the Paulings wrote during their nearly six-decades-long relationship, which saw Linus awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and -- with the work done at the urging of this activist wife -- the Nobel Peace Prize eight years later. Carson fleshes out the life of this trained chemist, who like many scientifically trained women of her generation, became a background figure to a lauded husband, with details of their university days and their interwoven personal and professional lives: "I'm sure that if I had not married her," Linus said after winning his second Nobel, "I would not have [worked] for world peace." [via Oregon Live]

Hot on the heels of her memoir announcement and the rumors of a 2016 presidential bid, news has surfaced that Hillary Clinton will also be portrayed in an upcoming biopic, due out that election year. The cinematic take of the former Secretary of State's life will focus on her days fresh out of Yale Law, when she lived in the nation's capital as her law school partner, Bill, set up house in Arkansas. Screenplay writer Young Il Kim says he chose this part of his subject's life in order to explore the personal and political decisions that shaped her career decades later, and to take a look at more universal themes as well. "She was a regular twenty-something dealing with all the normal issues of dating, college, and navigating the professional world," he reminds us. [via Parade]

Biographile’s This Week in History remembers events of the past, and the icons that set them in motion. 

To an untrained eye, the illustration above looks a lot like a photoshopped version of The Creation of Adam. But to members of Pastafarianism, it's the symbol of a savior, a holy depiction of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Adherents of Pastafarianism claim to be part of an actual religion, but most people (the ones who know how to take a joke) recognize it for what it is: a parody of human gullibility.

This week in history, we take similar leaps of faith to acknowledge the import of one L. Ron Hubbard. Pulpy sci-fi writer, self-help guru and pseudo-psychologist, Hubbard fused his fields of work together and came to the realization that maybe, just maybe, he was a prophet of a then-unknown religion, destined to inform the world of our immortality and origins, which naturally date back to the travels of Xenu and the detonation of hydrogen bombs inside a network of volcanoes. All of which took place seventy-five million years ago. Phew.

And like all good theories, it needed a foundational bible of sorts to be validated. So on May 9, 1950, a little over ninety years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species, L. Ron Hubbard completed Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, instantly disproving humanity's potential to learn just about anything. Hubbard's book would go on to inform the tenets of the Church of Scientology, established in 1952 and preying on the souls (or "thetans," for the devout among us) of the weak ever since.

Hubbard's theories live on today. For some solace, try relishing in the media's reviews of the 2000 film -- based on Hubbard's book -- Battlefield Earth, which won a Razzie for Worst Picture and Worst Couple (Travolta and "anyone on the screen with him"). Or you can take the higher road, arm yourself with apprehension, and read Lawrence Wright's incisive look into the shady practices of the Scientology faithful, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief.