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Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West
Maybe someday
42
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
15/100Critics
15/100Scholars
95/100Author:
Justin Farrell
Publisher:
Princeton University Press
Date:
March 3, 2020
Justin Farrell spent five years in Teton County, Wyoming, the richest county in the United States, and a community where income inequality is the worst in the nation. He conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews, gaining unprecedented access to tech CEOs, Wall Street financiers, oil magnates, and other prominent figures in business and politics. He also talked with the rural poor who live among the ultra-wealthy and often work for them. The result is an account of the far-reaching consequences of the massive accrual of wealth, and an eye-opening and sometimes troubling portrait of a changing American West.
What The Reviewers Say
Why do billionaires love Wrangler jeans? This is just one of many essential, puzzling and surprisingly heartbreaking questions asked by Yale sociologist Justin Farrell in Billionaire Wilderness, a sweeping new study of the ultra-wealthy who’ve moved to — or at least declared residency in — Teton County, Wyo., as well as the largely Latino underclass that serves them.
Justin Farrell, associate professor of sociology at Yale University, has managed to write a book interesting from acknowledgements to footnotes, but not without significant blemishes.
Farrell brings a good mixture of information and perspectives to his research.
... a carefully researched, Yale-sponsored sociological study in which the possession of great wealth is treated with an almost liturgical reverence, and the possessors are handled like plutonium.
