This week saw the release of the first major, large-scale biography on one of pop music’s biggest and most guarded stars: Beyoncé. The product of hundreds of hours of interviews from dozens of sources, J. Randy Taraborrelli’s Becoming Beyoncé aims to be the definitive chronicle on the creation of an icon. It also suggests that virtually everything Beyoncé has told the public checks out. You won’t find any credence given to pregnancy conspiracy theories or Illuminati affiliations. Beyoncé is portrayed as someone who was deeply secretive from the time she was a child (as one of her elementary school classmates attests), and a shrewd business woman who severs ties not out of vindictiveness but for the sake of her career. If you go into the book thinking Beyoncé is perfect, you will find your suspicions confirmed.