The Power Game. By Stephen Collins. ( O'Brien Press) £11.77

The best part of this book is the conclusion. This is no adverse criticisms of a pivotal work that focuses on where we are, politically, in Ireland at the start of the new millenium - and charts precisely how we got there. Collins's jeremiads in the final chapter may be summed up in one word, "pragmatism", which he maintains has been at the core of Fianna Fail's attitude for so long that the party has difficulty formulating anything but a short-term response to revelations about the culture of corruption that flourished under Haughey. It is arguable, he says, that Haughey was as much a symptom as a cause of what went wrong.