by Jack Donahue
Mike Halbouty, the subject of this biography, is a Houston oilman-geologist who left Texas A&M in the '30s, was both smart and lucky and got rich striking oil. Stories about those early days of wildcatting, of becoming unimaginably wealthy almost overnight, have a beautiful patina now that they are gone forever. But Halbouty is today mainly a spokesman for independent oilmen, and his speeches calling for an end to government regulation of the oil industry take up a lot of this book. Is the fact that Halbouty predicted the current oil crisis back in 1960 such a miracle? Halbouty is a marvelous character in a rough, romantic business, but the author, a former Houston newspaperman, describes him in the most effusive praise this side of a Hollywood press release. (McGraw Hill, $10.95)
Your Reaction
