T his is the story of an American orig-

inal. Boone Pickens started out in

the 1950s with $2,500. Over the

next 30 years he built Mesa Petroleum,

America s largest independent oil com-

pany, now worth close to $3 billion.

It s a success story--but something

more than that. A lot of the things that

happen to successful people didn t happen

to Pickens. For one thing, he didn t stop

believing in his principles.

In this book he tells us how he made it--

and he also shares his candid insights into

what s wrong with corporate America.

He takes us inside the upper reaches of the

corporate world and shows us companies

beset with laziness and corruption. He

tells it as he has seen it, firsthand: Why the

energy crisis was a farce... How the big

oil companies rolled up enormous profits,

then squandered them at the expense of

their shareholders . . . Why America s

tenured, flock-together CEOs prize their

membership in the Good O1 Boys club...

Most important, why American compa-

nies need restructuring.

In many of America s boardrooms,

Boone Pickens is feared. But to stockhold-

ers, academics, small business men, ordi-

nary Americans, he is a folk hero. He has

challenged some of the biggest companies

in the oil industry, and now he tells for the

first time the whole story behind the

famous takeover battles with Gulf Oil,

Phillips, Unocal--deals that changed

the structure of American business

permanently.