Horne took Australian society to task for its philistinism, provincialism and dependence. When it was first published in 1964, The Lucky Country caused a sensation. The book still remains illuminating and insightful decades later. The book was a wake-up call to an unimaginative nation, an indictment of a country mired in mediocrity and manacled to its past. 2009. It 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.