This book is the inspiration for the Academy Award-nominated film, There Will Be Blood , starring Daniel Day-Lewis. As he did so masterfully in The Jungle , Pulitzer Prize-winning author Upton Sinclair interweaves social criticism with human tragedy to create an unforgettable portrait of Southern California's early oil industry. Enraged by the oil scandals of the Harding administration in the 1920s, Sinclair tells a gripping tale of avarice, corruption, and class warfare, featuring a cavalcade of characters, including senators, oil magnates, Hollywood film starlets, and a crusading evangelist. At the center of the novel are an oil developer and his son. As the story moves forward, the divide between father and son grows until the young man is fighting the very industry that brought his father great success. Sinclair's glorious 1927 epic endures as one of our most powerful American novels of social injustice. "A solid and believable performance that will engage listeners with its simplicity and earnestness...This is perhaps an even more remarkable feat considering the length of the production. Through thick and thin, Gardner never fails to deliver with passion and vigor -- "AudioFile" "A tremendous piece of work." -- "The Nation" "Grover Gardner does a superb job narrating, always conveying the humanity of the main characters while capturing the humor of the many caricatured stereotypes." -- "SoundCommentary.com" "He does his little bit of muckraking...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." -- "New Republic" "Sinclair's 1927 novel did for California's oil industry what The Jungle did for Chicago's meat-packing factories." -- "Library Journal" Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) was a journalist, a prominent social and political activist, and the author of over one hundred books, including the novel Dragon's Teeth , which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1943. He is perhaps best known for The Jungle , the dramatic exposé of the Chicago meat-packing industry that prompted the investigation by Theodore Roosevelt that culminated in the pure-food legislation of 1906. Grover Gardner is an award-winning narrator with over a thousand titles to his credit. Named one of the "Best Voices of the Century" and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he has won three prestigious Audie Awards. Author Upton Sinclair's remarkable early-twentieth-century epic tells the story of Southern California's cut-throat oil industry, and the lengths that some folks would go to enjoy success. Hard-pressed to outperform actor Daniel Day Lewis's Oscar-winning performance in the feature film adaptation, narrator Grover Gardner plays it straight in a solid and believable performance that will engage listeners with its simplicity and earnestness. Though there aren't many dramatic shifts in tone or accent, the sea of characters that floods this story is realistic from first to last. This is perhaps an even more remarkable feat considering the length of the production. Through thick and thin, Gardner never fails to deliver with passion and vigor. L.B. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine Used Book in Good Condition