''The Arrogance of Power,'' which Viking will publish and is planning to sell for $29.95, is generally hostile in its treatment of Mr. Nixon.

It restates, with much new detail, the accusation that Mr. Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign sought to persuade South Vietnam's President Nguyen Van Thieu not to agree to President Lyndon Johnson's pleas that he agree to join peace talks in Paris with the United States, North Vietnam and the Viet Cong.

In particular, Mr. Summers, an Irish journalist, cites a document the Federal Bureau of Investigation released to him, recording a wiretap of South Vietnam's ambassador to Washington, Bui Diem. It reported that ''Mrs. Anna Chennault contacted Vietnamese ambassador, Bui Diem, and advised that she had received a message from her boss (not further identified), which her boss wanted her to give personally to the ambassador. She said that message was that the ambassador is to 'hold on, we are gonna win' and that her boss also said 'hold on, he understands all of it.' She repeated that this is the only message 'he said please tell your boss to hold on.' She advised that her boss had just called from New Mexico.''

On that day, Nov. 2, 1968, Gov, Spiro T. Agnew, the vice-presidential candidate, was in Albuquerque. Mr. Summers, citing declassified White House documents, suggests that Mr. Agnew himself telephoned Mrs. Chennault, a well-connected Washington hostess and the widow of Claire Lee Chennault, commander of the Flying Tigers in China. He concludes ''Nixon's running mate acted for no one but Nixon.'' He also reports that Mrs. Chennault told the ambassador's secretary after the election that she had talked to Mr. Nixon about her role.

The most provocative charge in the book is that Mr. Nixon beat his wife, Pat. Here the author relies on second-hand accounts. He writes of various journalists being told of beatings. His most specific account comes from John P. Sears, an aide to Nixon in the 1968 campaign and early in his administration, describing an event that may have happened just after Mr. Nixon's 1962 defeat for governor of California.

The book quotes Mr. Sears as saying a Nixon family lawyer, Waller Taylor, ''told me that Nixon had hit her in 1962 and that she threatened to leave him over it. . . . I'm not talking about a smack. . . . He blackened her eye. . . . I had heard about that from Pat Hillings as well as from the family lawyer.'' Mr. Sears, a retired lawyer in Washington, confirmed today that he had told Mr. Summers about Mr. Taylor and Mr. Hillings. Mr. Taylor and Mr. Hillings, a longtime Nixon associate, are both dead.

Julie Nixon Eisenhower, advised of the accusation, asked John Taylor, director of the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, Calif., to respond on her behalf.