Dukakis--Stumping in Her Own Write : Books: The wife of the former Democratic presidential candidate is winding up the tour on behalf of her new autobiography.

The good news was that Kitty Dukakis was already tired of it all.

Just a few hours before a Beverly Hills bash Monday celebrating her new tell-all autobiography, “Now You Know,” Dukakis was musing about how glad she was that the book tour was nearly over.

And--not counting a few interviews she did before the Dukakises’ recent trip to Europe--she’d only been touring a week.

“I think what this tour has taught me is I don’t need a tour to feel good about myself,” she said. “I guess the fact that I’m ready for it to be over is a healthy sign.”

And this from an erstwhile excitement junkie who collapsed in the vacuum left after husband Michael’s ill-fated run for the presidency. In an already notorious series of personal setbacks detailed in her book, Kitty Dukakis plunged into a maelstrom of addictive behavior last year. Having long and publicly overcome a nearly lifelong addiction to amphetamines, she traded that dependency for alcoholism, resorting to nail polish, hair spray and rubbing alcohol when her home was stripped of liquor.

Some critics are wondering why she drank and told. But if members of the media have criticized Dukakis for her frankness, she was the hub of admiring attention in Beverly Hills Monday evening.

“I think everyone can sympathize,” said Patty Grubman, a Dukakis friend, Broadway producer and hostess of the book party. “Sharing it is so difficult. She’s so brave.” “It took a lot of guts to write a book like this,” said Billy Grubman, Patty’s brother, co-host and owner of the lavish home that teemed with some 175 guests, including Ali McGraw, Rosalind Wyman, Tyne Daly, Freddie Fields, Sherry Lansing and Dukakis co-author Jane Scovell.

Outside, revelers clustered at tables with pink tablecloths that matched Grubman’s pink Italianate mansion, while the band Coco Jo belted out oldies. Inside, Dukakis, garbed in a black crepe suit and pearl and diamond earrings, signed books across from an E. S. Hess painting of two men eating Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Party-goers were each given a small shopping bag with a copy of Dukakis’ book and brochures for the Dream Street Foundation, a privately funded organization founded by the Grubmans that sends children with life-threatening illnesses to camp. The camps, held in Los Olivos north of Santa Barbara and Ft. Smith, Ark., provided recreation and medical care for 150 children last summer.

Now it’s off to San Diego for Dukakis, where she will have a five-day sailing reunion with women from the Outward Bound program she attended last year (and later wrote about) in an attempt to fend off the post-campaign blues. The equal-opportunity event will be bipartisan.