We're living in a period of liberal backlash to vitriolic conservative commentators like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. Blatantly liberal authors like Al Franken and Michael Moore are riding a wave of discontent against the current administration that's granted them high book sales and national notoriety. But it would be a mistake to lump Ron Suskind's new book, The Price of Loyalty with works such as Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them and Dude, Where's My Country? Suskind's book is clearly more a work of journalism than commentary.

Also, Suskind has a dynamite source that sets The Price of Loyalty apart from every other critique of George W. Bush's presidency: Bush's former Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill. In an administration more closed-mouthed than any other in recent memory, such an inside source is a revelation. And it doesn't hurt that O'Neill drops some real bombshells in this book -- most significantly, his charge that Bush began planning Saddam Hussein's removal as soon as he took office, not after Sept. 11, 2001.

O'Neill's perspective is a unique one, as he rose to prominence as an economist during the Nixon and Ford years. As such, he seems surprised to find that Bush's White House is a place run not on solid policies, but on political ideology. As O'Neill tells it, Bush's strategies on economics and other essential areas of government are slipshod plans intended to jibe with the opinions of political advisors such as Karl Rove. And Suskind paints a picture of a political machine that crushes anyone who dares stand in the way of those strategies, showing how O'Neill was railroaded out of government service after he began to speak his mind.

Of course, thanks to O'Neill's field of expertise, much of the book dissects economic policy, and parts of the text are quite dry. But it doesn't often bog the reader down for long, because passages dealing with the personalities of pols such as Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Colin Powell spice things back up. And it makes sense that the book focuses as much on political personalities as it does policymaking -- after all, one of O'Neill's charges is that the current mood in the executive branch allows emotion and ideology to trump logic.

One personality that takes a definite beating (aside from Rove) is Bush himself. O'Neill, like many of Bush's other current critics, has forsaken the line that Bush is a fool. Instead, the Bush of Suskind's book is calculating, but uninterested in effective government. With the 2004 presidential election approaching, it will be curious to see how accounts such as O'Neill's, when combined with accusations such as the Democrat's charge that Bush went AWOL during his National Guard days, affect how Americans perceive the President.

What sets Suskind's book apart from other investigations into Bush's administration is his -- and O'Neill's- respectability as sources. Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal national affairs correspondent, brings enough integrity to the table, but on top of his reputation, he also has O'Neill and the collection of e-mails, transcribed conversations, schedules and reports the former Treasury Secretary brings with him. The Price of Loyalty isn't name-calling, or a partisan attack. It's a weighty accusation, strengthened by the authenticity of the facts behind it. You can't ignore the questions this book raised -- nor should you.