DURING the twentieth century oil has brought so much money to the Southwest that the proceeds from cattle have come to look like tips. This statement is not based on statistics, though statistics no doubt exist--even on the cost of catching sun perch. Geological, legal, and economic writings on oil are mountainous in quantity, but the human drama of oil yet remains, for the most part, to be written. It is odd to find such a modern book as Erna Fergusson's _Our Southwest_ not mentioning oil. It is odd that no book of national reputation comes off the presses about any aspect of oil. The nearest to national notice on oil is the daily report of transactions on the New York Stock Exchange. Oil companies subsidize histories of themselves, endow universities with money to train technicians they want, control state legislatures and senates, and dictate to Congress what they want for themselves in income tax laws; but so far they have not been able to hire anybody to write a book about oil that anybody but the hirers themselves wants to read. Probably they don't read them. The first thing an oilman does after amassing a few millions is buy a ranch on which he can get away from oil--and on which he can spend some of his oil money. People live a good deal by tradition and fight a good deal by tradition also, voting more by prejudice. When one considers the stream of cow country books and the romance of mining living on in legends of lost mines and, then, the desert of oil books, one realizes that it takes something more than money to make the mare of romance run. Geology and economics are beyond the aim of this _Guide_, but if oil money keeps on buying up ranch land, the history of modern ranching will be resolved into the biographies of a comparatively few oilmen. BOATRIGHT, MODY C. _Gib Morgan: Minstrel of the Oil Fields_. Texas Folklore Society, Austin, 1945. Folk tales about Gib rather than minstrelsy. OP. BOONE, LALIA PHIPPS. _The Petroleum Dictionary_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1952. "More than 6,000 entries: definitions of technical terms and everyday expressions, a comprehensive guide to the language of the oil industry." CAUGHEY, JOHN WALTON. _Gold Is the Cornerstone_ (1948). Adequate treatment of the discovery of California gold and of the miners. _Rushing for Gold_ (1949). Twelve essays by twelve writers, with emphasis on travel to California. Both books published by University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles. CENDRARS, BLAISE. _Sutter's Gold_, London, 1926. OP. CLARK, JAMES A., and HALBOUTY, MICHEL T. _Spindletop_, Random House, New York, 1952. On January 10, 1901, the Spindletop gusher, near Beaumont, Texas, roared in the oil age. This book, while it presumes to record what Pat Higgins was thinking as he sat in front of a country store, seems to be "the true story." The bare facts in it make drama. DE QUILLE, DAN (pseudonym for William Wright). _The Big Bonanza_, Hartford, 1876. Reprinted, 1947. OP.