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In this autobiography, the outspoken entrepreneur explains how he turned a small investment into the world's biggest independent oil company, offering a unique look at the way American business works

Pickens, in case anyone needs to bereminded, is the independent Texas oil producer and financier who not long ago engineered, in his words, ``the largest corporate merger of all time''the Gulf Oil ``deal'' that increased Gulf stock prices to the immense profit of shareholders (including Pickens) while obliterating the giant corporation itself. This memoir gives an inside, often eyebrow-raising look at the workings of the oil industry as Pickens progresses from a hardscrabble, Texas Panhandle existence to small-scale oil well wild-catting with financing hard to come by; regional and national success with his Mesa Petroleum Co.; risky North Sea exploration during the OPEC oil ``shortage''; limited acceptance by industrial-establishment executives at hunting-lodge conclaves; the Gulf set-to and other, less spectacular deals. ``The entrepreneurial spirit,'' says Boone, ``is rooted in the desire to make money.'' (March 16) Copyright 1987 Cahners Business Information.