Reviews for The Lucky Country

The average rating for The Lucky Country based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-02-13 00:00:00 Paul Ancheta Pungent. Much of the analysis still applicable today 2015 with a conservative government in Canberra, a prime minister exhuming knighthoods on Australia Day. Is progress an illusion? The chapter on Menzies, a valuable record for future reference. The chapter 'Living with Asia' worth reading again today, gives an understanding of how Asia views Australia. Other topics I'd highlight are:- Nation without a mind, The first suburban nation, Snobs, Women, Between Britain and America, Lost bearings, Provincial Australia, A Republic?, Men in power, Who runs Australia?, Forming Opinions, inc. Censors, Schools, Images of life, The press.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-07-13 00:00:00 William H. Brooks Mainly an interesting period piece, but always good to know where hackneyed phrases come from, particularly if, as in this case, they get misused: Australia is a lucky country, it turns out, because even though our politicians and other 'leadership' types are entirely incompetent, the state somehow struggles on. Horne writes well, and he's funny, but it's unclear to me whether his fundamental argument was true: was Australia really a country being held back by a lack of ambition and gusto at the highest levels? Was Australia really being held back at all? In cultural terms, yes, but keep in mind that when Horne published this, White had just published Voss and Riders in the Chariot, modernist art was getting going, and Peter Sculthorpe was about to publish Sun Music I. So things were really on the upswing. Horne's book itself might have been a part of that. On the downside, it's very irritating to read a book this long that avoids proper nouns almost entirely. I say White had just published Voss, and Horne does mention that novel--but not in the section on literature. There are few to no names at all, regardless of the context. So one doesn't really learn much about who or what Horne thought was to blame, or who was helping, or even that there were people in Australia in the late '50s and early '60s at all. More amusingly, he says the Young Liberals were energetic, while the other political parties were totally moribund. Somewhere, Whitlam is laughing.