Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) -- T. Boone Pickens has been many things in his 80 years: oil man, corporate raider, shareholder activist and hedge-fund manager. One thing he's not is a quitter.

``The more people count me out, the more I count myself in,'' he writes in ``The First Billion Is the Hardest,'' a sassy mishmash of a book that begins as a memoir, segues into a management guide and closes with an energy plan for the U.S.

Pickens loves being an underdog. ``Look at Seabiscuit,'' he says. If that sounds like cowboy bravado, listen up.

A dozen years ago, Pickens was hurting. Bad bets on natural gas had forced him to sell Mesa Petroleum Co., the independent oil company he founded four decades before. His marriage had landed in divorce court, he was 68 years old and a doctor had declared him clinically depressed, he says.

Instead of cashing in his chips and retiring, Pickens set up commodities hedge fund BP Capital LLC in Dallas and went on to amass a net worth that stood at $3 billion last year, according to Forbes. His book aims to inspire other Americans who are entering what he calls ``the fourth quarter.''

``I want them to know what I've learned at 80: The best part of the game truly lies ahead,'' he writes.

When you're as rich as Pickens, you can afford to be corny. Especially if you salt your remarks with earthy aphorisms, admit your flubs (he flunked a National Futures Association exam twice) and can pin your enemies to the mat.

(Pickens recalls how he shamed one director of a takeover target who owned only 100 shares in the company. The man was so cheap, Pickens says, that ``he wouldn't have paid a dime to watch a piss-ant eat a bale of hay.'')

Paper Route

The first half of the book breezes along with reminiscences about Pickens's upbringing in Oklahoma, complete with frugal parents, paper route, one shrewd grandmother and a basketball scholarship. He also describes the glory days, when he quit his job as a 26-year-old geologist for Phillips Petroleum Co., formed his own oil company and mounted the takeover bids that put Mesa on the map.

Then came his new beginning with BP Capital, which initially racked up loss after loss.

``Our fund was down more than 90 percent,'' he writes. ``Did you hear that? We were close to being out of business.''

Pickens hit bottom, saw a psychiatrist who put him on antidepressants and ``began emerging from a really dark decade,'' he writes. He went on to ride the energy bull market.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

``Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser,'' he says in one of many ``Booneisms'' that dot these pages, along with nods to his friend Arnold Schwarzenegger, his personal trainer and his papillon pooch Murdock.

Having established his credentials, Pickens moves on to his management tips -- ``help, don't hinder'' -- and a blunt summary of why we need to accept that the world is running out of oil.

``The Saudis claim they have 260 billion barrels in reserve,'' he writes. ``I don't believe them.''

What's the U.S. to do? For starters, use natural gas for transport: It's ``clean, cheap and domestic,'' he says. It's also the backbone of a transport-fueling company Pickens founded, Clean Energy Fuels Corp.

Pickens is placing a bet on wind power, too, with his company Mesa Power LP. Wind energy is big in the blustery Texas Panhandle, even if Pickens himself doesn't want any wind turbines on his 68,000-acre ranch there.

Above all, Pickens says, the U.S. needs an overarching energy plan that draws on all its domestic resources: ``coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind and solar, as well as our limited oil reserves.'' The stakes are clear, he says:

``It's time to declare war on a crisis that threatens the very security of America by sending $1 trillion overseas each year, enriching our enemies, downgrading our global status and pushing our already fragile financial condition toward almost certain meltdown.''

When he puts it that way, it's hard to disagree. Are Barack Obama and John McCain listening?

``The First Billion Is the Hardest: Reflections on a Life of Comebacks and America's Energy Future'' is published by Crown (272 pages, $26.95).

(James Pressley writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this review: James Pressley in Brussels at jpressley@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: August 26, 2008 19:55 EDT