Jim Henson’s biography comes out today, on what would have been his 77th birthday -- and is as warm and unshocking a story as you would expect. Illustrating his life from his roots (at home, his mother was an early goofy influence) to his childhood spent in company of TV’s golden beginning, watching small-screen idols like Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, and Ernie Kovacs, Brian Jay Jones’ Jim Henson is a chronicle of the before, during, and after of Henson’s almost-real and completely loved Muppets. [via The Washington Post]

Leonardo Dicaprio may soon be the new face of Woodrow Wilson. The actor, who took on J. Edgar Hoover in the 2011 biopic, is in talks to take on the leading role in a film adaptation of A. Scott Berg’s presidential biography -- which Warner Bros plans to option. The script will focus on the twenty-eighth president’s two terms, from 1913 to 1921, during which he led the U.S. into World War I, and founded the Federal Reserve. [via The Guardian]

Richard Dawkins’s memoir will fill bookstore shelves today. Look for it to include his famously gruff science vs. religious faith take, of course, but there’s an unexpected conversation in there, too. An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist keeps to the usual easy-to-understand scientific details -- side by side with the scientist’s intimate life details. From his childhood spent in Africa and England (where we imagine he first wondered about things like how fast reindeer would need to fly in order to complete Santa’s mission), to his years studying zoology at Oxford, Dawkin’s autobiography is a rigorous and wondering look back through his formative years. [The International Business Times]

That most visually joyous of performers, Grace Jones, has signed on with Simon & Schuster’s Gallery Books to write, at long last, her memoir. Due out in fall 2014, the model-actress-singer’s book will put the telling of Jones’s famously famous life in the right hands: If she didn’t take it on, someone else would, she says. Look for details on Jones collaborations with people like Andy Warhol and Arnold Schwarzenegger, as well as quieter ones like her days as Jerry Hall’s roommate. [via The New York Times]