Now Davis has written “The Way I See It” (G.P. Putnam’s Sons. $22.95), an autobiography with a title that Howard Cosell would kill for. Putting aside her highly creative world of mean moms and of dads who are the governor of California, she now reveals, for only the fourth time in the last six years, what her childhood was like.

The accent this time is on abuse. “There was physical abuse, there was emotional abuse, there was substance abuse,” Davis said on “Prime Time Live.” Specifically, Davis, 39, charges that her mother slapped her in the face “weekly, sometimes daily” when she was growing up. And she implies that these rages may have resulted from Nancy’s seeming dependence on tranquilizers. (Davis, who was hooked on diet pills herself for several years, stops short of using the word “addiction.” Her father refused to acknowledge what was happening around him, she says. But instead of seeing this as brilliant statesmanship, as millions of Americans did, Davis speaks in terms of “textbook child-of-an-alcoholic behavior.” (The former president has written about dragging his drunken father off the front porch.)

Davis hasn’t seen her mother in three years. Still, a reconciliation is possible, she says, even in the wake of this book. For $500,000 (her reported advance) Davis really doesn’t bum too many bridges. She’s the kind of author who gives good book tour but doesn’t back it up on the pages. Take her mother’s alleged drug abuse: Nancy may have been a member of the “Miltown generation,” but she wasn’t exactly the Charlie Parker of Pacific Palisades; she wasn’t even late for the manicurist. And it’s a big step down to Mom’s second-tier sins, such as snooping in her notebooks, listening on the extension and buying (and then returning) dresses that Davis considered icky. Her father, meanwhile, was the kind of monster who tossed magazines into the fireplace, even though that couldn’t have been, you know, great for the air.

Davis says she’s ready to “forgive my parents for all the things they’ve done” to make her miserable. She sees herself as part of the self-help movement, says that she’s benefited from the works of John Bradshaw and speaks about “working to break cycles.” The Reagans were certainly into denial last week: they issued a formal one in response to the book, adding that they hoped that “the day will come when [Patti] will rejoin the family.”