Petroleum Man

Book excerpt: A billionaire sets out to teach his grandchildren some life lessons in this sharply funny novel by “a brilliant, original writer” (Ann Beattie, author of The Accomplished Guest). Bewildered by the odious liberal tendencies of his son-in-law, Chip, Leon Tuggs, self-made arch-capitalist billionaire, inventor of the ubiquitous and environmentally hazardous Thingie, and author of the influential General Theory of Industrial Sex, decides to rescue his grandchildren from a life of guilt, indecision, and existential anxiety, by educating them in the way the world actually works and telling them, for their own good, the things no teacher or parent in our politically correct and morally relative world could ever venture to say . . . Petroleum Man is a hilariously scathing satire that takes on both sides of some of the raging debates of our times between Democrats and Republicans, haves and have-nots, trickle-down conservatives and bleeding-heart liberals, environmentalists and industrialists—a comic classic from the author of Gascoyne and Some Instructions.