The Big Rich, Bryan Burrough’s history of Texas oil men, just got a starred review from Publishers Weekly, the industry guide used by many booksellers and book editors as an advance word on soon-to-be-released titles. The review calls the book not a piece of nostalgia for when giants roamed the Texsas countryside, drilling everywhere they could. Because it’s a generational saga of the oil families, Big Rich has a poignant contemporary relevance: “This is a portrait of capitalism as white-knuckle risk taking, yielding fruitful discoveries for the fathers, but only sterile speculation for the sons — a story that resonates with today’s economic upheaval.”

One wonders if there’s room in the oft-told saga of Texas oil-men-turned-right-wing patrons (Hunt, Murchison, Cullen, Richardson) for some mention of those other significant families of Texas energy-and-politics: the Buckleys and the Bushes.

A columnist for Vanity Fair and the author best known for Barbarians at the Gate, Burrough already had a chapter from the book excerpted in VF, so the publicity steamroller is picking up steam for the book’s Jan. 27 publication.