With an introduction by Hugh Mackay.
'Australia is a lucky country, run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck.'
The phrase 'the lucky country' has become part of our lexicon; it's forever being invoked in debates about the Australian way of life, but is all too often misused by those blind to Horne's irony.
When it was first published in 1964 The Lucky Country caused a sensation. Horne took Australian society to task for its philistinism, provincialism and dependence. The book was a wake-up call to an unimaginative nation, an indictment of a country mired in mediocrity and manacled to its past. Although it's a study of the confident Australia of the 1960s, the book still remains illuminating and insightful decades later. The Lucky Country is valuable not only as a source of continuing truths and revealing snapshots of the past, but above all as a key to understanding the anxieties and discontents of Australian society today.
Author(s): Donald Horne
Edition: 6
Publisher: Penguin Group (Australia)
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 256
INTRODUCTION BY HUGH MACKAY
INTRODUCTION TO THE THE FIFTH EDITION
NOTES TO THE FOURTH EDITION
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
PROLOGUE
Peopled from all over Asia
Chapter 1 THE AUSTRALIAN DREAM
Innocent happiness
Nation without a mind
Chapter 2 WHAT IS AN AUSTRALIAN?
The first suburban nation
Fair go, mate
Having a good time
Give it a go
Racketeers of the mediocre
Chapter 3 SENSES OF DIFFERENCE
Eleven cities
The bush
The wowsers
Catholics
Snobs
Cultural breakthrough
Women
Migrants – how assimilated?
The underprivileged
Chapter 4 BETWEEN BRITAIN AND AMERICA
Lost bearings
Looking to Britain
Looking to America
Provincial Australia
A republic?
Chapter 5 LIVING WITH ASIA
What is Asia?
The power situation
Images of Asia
Racism in Australia: White Australia
Racism in Australia: Aborigines
Attitudes to Oceania
Chapter 6 MEN AT WORK
Men of business
Open spaces
The unions
Chapter 7 MEN IN POWER
Who runs Australia?
From America – federalism
From Britain – Parliaments”
Australia’s four-party system: the struggle for the Labour Movement
The four-party system: ‘tensions’ of the Coalition
The bureaucracy
The pressure groups
What’s in it for him?
Chapter 8 THE AGE OF MENZIES
The great survivor
The Age of Menzies
After Menzies
Chapter 9 FORMING OPINIONS
Censors
Schools
Images of life
The ‘academics’
The Press
The intellectuals
Chapter 10 THE LUCKY COUNTRY
Living on our luck
Will the luck last?
INDEX
