Written by a self-professed friend and fan, one hardly expects “Being Martha: The Inside Story of Martha Stewart and Her Amazing Life” (Wiley, 240 pages, $24.95) to take a critical view of the billionaire homemaking diva. Indeed, now that she’s served her time and is rebuilding her brand to pre-conviction levels and beyond, an open-minded look at this extraordinary businesswoman and cultural icon might well be due.

Lloyd Allen’s “quest to fully understand who Stewart is,” however, trips over itself almost from page 1, showering an embarrassment of praise on its subject while offering little genuine insight or perspective. Though he has tried to position his book as a response to all the vitriol poured on Stewart during the course of her career, he’s maddeningly vague about just which jabs he takes exception to. “I read horrible headlines about her time and time again,” Mr. Allen writes. Yet the only examples he provides include a spot on Letterman, a few “Saturday Night Live” skits, and a remark from screwball director John Waters that Stewart was the inspiration for the lead character of his 1994 murder comedy “Serial Mom.”

But when it comes to the gambits that built her empire, Mr. Allen was clearly not among her inner circle – nor did he speak with those who were. Instead, he confines his conversations to members of Stewart’s immediate family, former kitchen assistants, hairdressers, and a few protegees, and the result is about as enlightening as a biography of President Bush researched entirely in Crawford and Kennebunkport. To wit: We learn that Stewart struggles with thank-yous and apologies (but expresses these sentiments in other ways); that she is hard-charging (just like male CEOs); that her mother believes she had a happy childhood. Oh yes – and we learn that Stewart is a perfectionist, too.

To the near-decade Stewart spent as a stockbroker after quitting her modeling career, Mr. Allen devotes a mere seven lines. Given whom he’s writing about, a few details here might have been nice: How did Stewart fare in the shark tank? What formative experiences later helped her transform her genius in the kitchen into a brand worth billions?

Such inquiries are beyond Mr. Allen, who declines to give any closer treatment of Stewart’s relationship with retail giant Kmart, which made her a national name and continues to stand as one of the great instances of a savvy businesswoman running circles around those who underestimated her. All we learn about her blockbuster IPO in 1999 is that she served orange juice and brioche on the floor of the stock exchange.

There are a number of exciting anecdotes from the early days of Stewart’s home-based catering era, where Mr. Allen seems to have found his best sources. And he does treat us to some interesting moments over the years, such as Stewart’s childhood conviction – shared with her difficult father and no one else in the family – that their roots went back to Polish royalty. Much of the last two chapters, which focus on Stewart’s incarceration, is fascinating.

Such nuggets are few and far between, however, and meanwhile, we are given a large-font, double-spaced love-note so fawning that it would embarrass – and bore – a high-schooler. In this way, “Being Martha” will be of interest only to the most rabid sort of fan, and readers looking for a confidant’s take on Stewart’s remarkable evolution will feel gypped by its attempts to pass off a mash of common knowledge and mincing detail as something revelatory.

Mr. Garin’s history of the cruise ship industry, “Devils on the Deep Blue Sea: The Dreams, Schemes and Showdowns that Built America’s Cruise Ship Empires,” is available from Viking.