Product Description

In Oil! Upton Sinclair fashioned a novel out of the oil scandals of the Harding administration, providing in the process a detailed picture of the development of the oil industry in Southern California. Bribery of public officials, class warfare, and international rivalry over oil production are the context for Sinclair's story of a genial independent oil developer and his son, whose sympathy with the oilfield workers and socialist organizers fuels a running debate with his father. Senators, small investors, oil magnates, a Hollywood film star, and a crusading evangelist people the pages of this lively novel.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1317 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-18
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

From Library Journal
Sinclair's 1927 novel did for California's oil industry what The Jungle did for Chicago's meat-packing factories. The plot follows the clash between an oil developer and his son. Typical of Sinclair, there are undertones here of socialism and sympathy for the common working stiff. Though the book is not out of print, this is the only paperback currently available.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New Republic
"He does his little bit of muck-raking. . . but the glorious story of the oil man and his son rushes on. It is a marvelous panorama of Southern California life. It is storytelling with an edge on it."

Kevin Starr, Endangered Dreams
"Oil! remains the most ambitious Southern California novel of the 1920s. . . . Chosen by the Literary Guild, Oil! made the best-seller list. Its sales were helped along when Sinclair, hoping to get arrested, personally hawked copies of the book on the streets of Boston, after it was banned there for its outspoken advocacy of birth control."

Customer Reviews

Oil!
My only "issue" was the type on the pages. It was a gift for my father and he said he thought it probably looked that way because it was a copy of the original printing. That's possible, but we couldn't find that stated anywhere in the book.

This is NOT an issue with the seller. The item was in perfect condition and arrived in a great timing!

Disappointingly ponderous.
This book starts off with some promise, but quickly becomes ponderous in the repetitive details of drilling for oil and capitalist/socialist/communist political drama surrounding same. There are many more productive ways to spend one's precious reading time.

labor vs. capital
I am enjoying this book. It's main character is the son of a rich self starter oil man. But how the oil man has become rich is the point of the book. He has become rich by taking advantage of the poor. The son befriends one of the carpenters who works for his father and learns what it is like to not have enough money. Then comes an inner struggle for the young man to figure out if he will take over the oil business and continue in the mode of his father, enjoying the wealth, or take care of labor and possibly not be able to sustain the business.