Oil!

Sinclair published this sprawling novel in 1926 and 1927, drawing on the Teapot Dome bribery scandal and the wildcat oil boom of Southern California. At its center is Bunny Ross, the thoughtful son of a self-made oil tycoon, who loves and admires his father even as he grows uneasy about how the fortune is made. Around them Sinclair packs a whole era: crooked politicians, revival preachers, striking oil workers, Hollywood, and the young radicals Bunny is drawn toward. The book is at once a family story and a wide social panorama of American capitalism in the 1920s. It later gave loose inspiration to the film There Will Be Blood. This edition is free to download as a PDF and EPUB.