Russell Meeuf is a faculty member at the University of Idaho. Articles he has written about John Wayne are available online and I think they give us a good idea of what his new book, John Wayne's World, will be like. It is very obvious from these articles that Professor Meeuf is a big John Wayne fan. There is nothing in these articles that "deface" John Wayne, either as a person or actor. Professor Meeuf writes very admiringly of the Wayne persona. But being an academic whose life work is to analyze, explore and explain, he is also curious about how John Wayne is received, not just in the United States, but around the world, and what his image meant for audiences outside the United States especially at a time when the United States was such a dominant force in the post-World War II era.
I should add that since he is an academic, he writes in academic jargon that will probably be hard going for the lay reader.
I just ordered a copy of John Wayne's World and I'm looking forward to reading it, though as a lay reader myself I will probably have to puzzle out a good deal of the text. 
