Broadcaster Micheβl ╙ Muircheartaigh is to launch Images and Chronicles: a Portrait of Kerry in the 20th Century next Thursday in Tralee. The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, will be guest of honour.
Though it is mainly a portrait of Kerry, and set to be the publication of the year in the county, the book is also a portrait of the changing face of Ireland from imperialism in 1914 (Your King and Country Need You) to immigration in 2000.
"History has to happen some place. It's going to happen here as much as anywhere else," said Mr Peter Malone, the editor. A freelance books editor, Mr Malone also compiled and produced the book.
Much has happened in Kerry from the evidence of picture and words.
Eamon de Valera plays chess with Kerry republican leader Austin Stack in Arbour Hill Prison, where they were imprisoned together during the Civil War, opposite an article that is thick with disillusionment over the lack of social change in 1924.
Michael Collins is in Killarney. Bill Clinton is in Ballybunion and a young and strong Charles J. Haughey, minister for lands and fisheries in 1966 reels in his catch at the Dingle sea angling festival in August of that year.
Roger Casement and the Antarctic explorer Tom Crean make appearances. And there is a young John B. Keane and the late Eamon Kelly. The filmmakers from Ryan's Daughter turn up too.
But the glimpses of ordinary people's lives tell the strongest stories. The feisty "unmanageable" spirit of Cumann na mBan women soldiers is captured surrounded by cheering crowds at Killarney Station after their release from prison in 1919.
We have to wait until the 1990s, which Mr Malone calls "the age of women" in the Kerryman, before women appear so strongly again. Since then the paper is no longer simply of "the Kerry man", despite a name which sounds increasingly eccentric in this age of equality.
Before the age of PR, and the press release, horrendous housing conditions were the subject of campaigning journalism by Seamus McConville and photographer Kevin Coleman in the 1960s.
The book is published by the Kerryman.