“Getty was every bit as miserly as he was usually depicted...[Lenzner] give[s] a full exposure of the other well-known aspect of Getty’s character, his voracious womanizing from puberty on... it is hard to decide which Getty enjoyed more, penny-pinching or bottom-pinching... If somebody sits down to write the history of the oil industry in the 20th Century, Lenzner’s book will be of... value to him or her... [Lenzner] address[es] the inevitable old question — did Getty’s money make him hap...

J. Paul Getty (1892-1976) was a shrewd industrialist who founded the Getty Oil Company in 1942, ultimately becoming a dominant player in the oil industry. In The Great Getty, Robert Lenzner presents an in-depth biography of the savviest entrepreneur of the 20th century and the world's richest private citizen at the time of his death— worth $6 billion, the equivalent of more than $27 billion in today' s money. As Lenzner chronicles Getty's life— through interviews with those closes...