There are as many books on Dublin as there are Dublins. Like many folk who live in Dublin, Pat Boran is not actually from the Pale itself, being a Portlaoise man, but nobody has a monopoly on our capital city. Boran has written a useful and compact history which is likely to be picked up by a visitor wanting to get a good cross-section of the political, geographical, and social stratas of the city. There are 19 short, well-flagged chapters, ranging from "The Prehistory of Dublin 5000 BC-AD 795', through Cromwellian, Georgian, and Fenian times to "The Shopping Centre in the 1980s and 1990s". Dublin has, of course, changed hugely in recent years, and Boran ends by saying: "With the current pace of development, the next 50 or 100 years may well bring changes in Dublin as dramatic as those experienced in the previous 1000."