Showtime

Book excerpt: In boom and in bust, Ireland has been led by Fianna Fáil. Showtime gets behind the party's remarkable dominance of the political landscape and leading political writer Pat Leahy, tells the gripping story of how it won, kept and has used power since the mid-1990s. Showtime explains how Fianna Fáil operated during the boom years - from November 1994, when Bertie Ahern assumed leadership of a battered party, expecting to become Taoiseach but instead finding himself cast into opposition, to the day he relinquished the party leadership on the brink of the bust. For a decade after it achieved power in 1997, Fianna Fáil led the government during an unprecedented economic boom and enjoyed riches beyond the wildest dreams of any previous administration. Showtime reveals how government really worked in these years: the favours, the grudges, the backroom deals, the political strokes, the policy compromises and the choices that have led the country to where it is today. Showtime is politics in the raw: the exciting, enlightening and sometimes disturbing story of a remarkable era that changed the face of modern Ireland.