A chemist’s life is transformed by the wonders of selling snake oil in this satire of early–twentieth century capitalism by the author of The Time Machine.

As a young assistant chemist, George Ponderevo rode his uncle’s coattails to a great fortune. His uncle Edward’s meteoric rise was all thanks to a miraculous patent medicine, Tono-Bungay—which George knew to be nothing more than sugar water. Though it provided none of its promised curative effects, Tono-Bungay was well marketed—and a huge success.

So it was that George Ponderevo went on to sit with countesses, find himself in a number of amorous entanglements, and enter the high-flying world of aeronautics. But when Uncle Edward’s business empire collapses, George concocts increasingly outlandish plots to save his mentor in fraud. First published in 1909, Tono-Bungay is an incisive satire of the social and economic forces that continue to shape our world today.