You Might Strike Oil

A lease man for a major oil company tells how he goes about his work, some of the fun in it and some of its frustrations. While he says that his book is intended to interest and amuse rather than to instruct, the reader learns a great deal about oil in the process. Oil may be anywhere, explains the author, but it doesn't belong to just anybody. In most countries it belongs to the government, but in the United States it belongs to the owner of the surface of the land under which it lies or to the speculator who may have purchased ""mineral rights."" Merlin F. Sailor's business is to secure for his company the right to conduct geophysical operations on and drill for and produce the oil and natural gas suspected to lie under the surface of the land. In his work he has met all kinds of people, from the lady who didn't want to lease her land because ""I'm from Brooklyn"" to the man who had never been in any ""institution"" except jail, ""and that was years ago."" Sailor could and did tell a good story in this truly human document, and, as a bonus, much of what he tells has genuine historical and literary value in the record of industrial America in the twentieth century. Here is a book for everyone interested in the oil industry - oilmen themselves, historians, writers looking for oil background materials, and general readers.