Oil!
A Muckraking Novel of California Oil Fields, Corporate Capitalism, Labor Exploitation, and Political AwakeningBy Upton Sinclair
Length23h 22m
About this audiobook
Published in 1927, Upton Sinclair's Oil! is a sweeping realist novel about the American petroleum industry during the years surrounding the First World War. Through the education of Bunny Ross, the idealistic son of an enormously wealthy California oilman, Sinclair examines corporate power, labor exploitation, political corruption, evangelical religion, sexual morality, and the emergence of radical social consciousness. Its expansive plot and documentary attention to industrial processes place it within the tradition of American muckraking, while its energetic satire, sharply contrasting voices, and episodic structure reveal the influence of naturalism and reformist political fiction. The novel's fictional scandals also unmistakably evoke the Teapot Dome affair, giving its historical imagination pointed contemporary force. Sinclair, one of the most prominent American socialist writers and investigative journalists of the Progressive Era, made a career of exposing the human costs concealed by modern capitalism. His earlier novel The Jungle had transformed public debate about the meatpacking industry; Oil! extends that project into the domains of energy, finance, and state power. Sinclair's political commitments inform the book's sympathies, yet his portrait of Bunny's divided loyalties preserves a productive tension between inherited privilege and ethical awakening. Oil! is especially recommended to readers interested in American political fiction, labor history, environmental humanities, and the literary representation of capitalism. It remains both a vigorous historical novel and a compelling inquiry into how wealth shapes public life and personal conscience.
Audiobook details
Rating★★★★ 3.9 (11.7K)
Includes Goodreads, LibraryThing, StoryGraph, Amazon
GenreGeneral Fiction
Length23 hrs 22 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateDec 4, 2023
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1County Chronicle (Annotated)
12CHAPTER XI THE REBEL
2CHAPTER I THE RIDE
13CHAPTER XII THE SIREN
3CHAPTER II THE LEASE
14CHAPTER XIII THE MONASTERY
4CHAPTER III THE DRILLING
15CHAPTER XIV THE STAR
5CHAPTER IV THE RANCH
16CHAPTER XV THE VACATION
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6CHAPTER V THE REVELATION
17CHAPTER XVI THE KILLING
7CHAPTER VI THE WILD-CAT
18CHAPTER XVII THE EXPOSURE
8CHAPTER VII THE STRIKE
19CHAPTER XVIII THE FLIGHT
9CHAPTER VIII THE WAR
20CHAPTER XIX THE PENALTY
10CHAPTER IX THE VICTORY
21CHAPTER XX THE DEDICATION
11CHAPTER X THE UNIVERSITY
22CHAPTER XXI THE HONEYMOON
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