White House officials braced yesterday for a forthcoming book in which former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill lavishes criticism on the Bush administration.

The book, "The Price of Loyalty," chronicles O'Neill's tenure at Treasury and conveys his impression of President Bush as a man uninterested in government policy, who tuned out detailed discussion of the economy and whose decisions were driven primarily by partisan politics.

O'Neill is expected to elaborate on those views in an interview with "60 Minutes" on CBS this Sunday.

The book is set for release Tuesday.

O'Neill, former chief executive officer of Pittsburgh-based Alcoa, was forced out early last year in a shakeup that also saw the removal of Lawrence Lindsey, head of the president's Council of Economic Advisers.

The day after he left the Cabinet, O'Neill, who also served in the Office of Management and Budget in the Johnson, Nixon and Ford administrations, returned to Pittsburgh. He currently works for Blackstone Group, an investment firm, and is head of the Pittsburgh Regional Health Care Initiative.

Reached yesterday, O'Neill cautioned against focusing on his assessments of Bush in appraising his book and urged a careful reading of what he views as general policy failings that should be corrected.

"If the 'red meat,' taken out of context, is all that people get out of this book, it will be a huge disappointment to me," he said. "Ideally, this book will cause people to stop and think about the current state of our political process and raise our expectations for what is possible."

Author Ron Suskind, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, declined to comment on the book yesterday. Details obtained through other sources, however, suggested that O'Neill's experience in the Bush Cabinet left him disappointed at what he saw as the lack of a comprehensive economic plan.

O'Neill riled Bush administration officials during his two years at Treasury with a number of impolitic remarks. He publicly expressed the view that Bush's $1.6 trillion tax cut, to be spread over 10 years, would do little to restart a sagging economy and would balloon the federal deficit. He also was critical of the Bush administration's decision to impose import tariffs to protect the domestic steel industry.

Bush appointed John Snow, former chairman of CSX Corp., to replace O'Neill.

White House spokesman Jim Morrell said administration officials were aware of the forthcoming book but unaware of its contents. He declined further comment.

Criticism of Bush's economic policies would come at a time when both the gross domestic product and the stock markets have seen rapid spurts. A weak dollar is expected to strengthen this week or next when the European Union lowers interest rates.

At the same time, the International Monetary Fund has reported that growing U.S. deficits threaten to hobble world economic growth.

Word of the book rumbled through Washington yesterday as speculation widened on how hard O'Neill would be on Bush and other key White House apparatchiks, including political adviser Karl Rove.

"O'Neill has a grudge to bear here and people with grudges find ways to see that they're carried out," said Larry Sabato, political science professor at the University of Virginia. At the same time, he said he doubted the book would have any impact with voters.

"I doubt if there are 10 people in the country who would vote against Bush because of something Paul O'Neill said in a book. Ninety-nine percent of Americans don't even know who Paul O'Neill is," Sabato said.

Thomas E. Mann, a scholar in political economics at the center-left Brookings Institution in Washington, said there was "a vast gulf between what O'Neill and President Bush consider an economic plan."

Bush, Mann said, seems to favor tax cuts, less regulation, business subsidies, national defense outlays and economic priming prior to elections "and not worrying too much about deficits.

"Beyond that, I'm sure he was not much interested in discussing economic policy."