Dublin: The Great Cities Series

The Great Cities

by Brendan Lehane

Book by Lehane, Brendan

Genres: Travel, History, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

Reviews

[Danny · Rating 3 out of 5]

We are planning a trip to the British Isles to include Ireland and so I grabbed this volume out of our collection of Time-Life books on the Great Cities. It provided good clues to this Anglo of the mentality of our Irish brethren.

[Neil Lynch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Folks of a certain age probably remember the Time-Life series called The Great Cities, a 25-book collection that featured some of the most prominent urban centers on Earth: London; Moscow; New York; Pekin (Beijing), each warmly remembered in lavishly-produced volumes by prominent writers of the time. I have 14 of the books in my collection, and, with our family planning a multi-generational trip there this summer, I chose Dublin, not because I wanted a tour guide (I have enough of those that I am reading to help put a plan in place for the trip); rather, I wanted a memoir. Dublin delivers.

Brendan Lehane, the Irish journalist and author who died early last year, writes lovingly about Ireland's capital and brings even those, like me, who have not visited up close and personal with daily life in "the fair city." Written in 1978, Dublin - and Ireland in general - are fresh off the troubles of the 1960s and 70s, and so the reader faces the hard realities of the pocket-sized metropolis rather than the glossy lists of "must sees" it offers. To be sure, the highlights are mentioned. Trinity College, the General Post Office Building, St. Patrick's Cathedral (Church of Ireland, not Catholic!), even the Guinness production plant. All present and accounted for, but as backdrops to the people rather than as centers of attention in their own right.

Lehane's chapters are accompanied by picture essays contributed by the editors and staff of Time-Life. The photos are grounded in the realities of the time. They are as fascinating as they are unpretentious, snapshots, frozen in time, that help the reader grasp struggles that would be faced by the city and the nation into the 21st century.

Travel anywhere requires an understanding of the history - and, yes the culture - of the place one is visiting. Dublin is one book that sets the reader on that path. Its age - printed in 1978 - makes it timeless and a most worthwhile reader for the traveler and soon-to-be visitor. An increasingly difficult collection of books to get hold of, I felt fortunate to find Dublin in my own collection.

[Henry Kline · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little out of date but a great read about Dublin and Ireland as a whole. Pass the Guinness.