Oil!, Paperback

Upton Sinclair's searing indictment of fossil fuels that predicts our current warming planet, while imagining a greener and more inclusive future

Based on the oil scandals of the Harding administration, Upton Sinclair's novel Oil! burst into the literary limelight amid soaring petroleum profits and gaping inequalities in 1927. Whether telling the story of the land, the ordinary civilian, or the heirs to oil fortune, Sinclair skilfully paints a detailed picture of the effects of corporate corruption, greed and how the so called "American Century" was born.

By turns an ardent family saga, scintillating potboiler, and anti-capitalist tirade, Oil! ranks among the most important critiques of fossil energy ever printed. An exhilarating, bewildering and enraging novel, that anticipated how fossil fuels would shape the dilemmas of our present, Oil! looks toward a greener, more inclusive, and altogether more livable world yet to come.