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 ... This is a serious, ugly, crazy amount of wealth, and while it feels extreme, it’s important to understand as a taste of what might be in store for the rest of America ... If the book stumbles at all, it’s in the hammy way Farrell sums up his approach and flaunts his equanimity, as well as his tic of referring back to and even quoting in bold earlier sections of the book — as if we weren’t stunned the first time by the super-rich guy claiming his fishmonger is a really good friend ... But for all the performances on display, this is ultimately a book about actions that speak louder than rationalizations ... The astronomical accumulation of wealth and the system built to perpetuate it is creating versions of Teton County all over the country and the world. It’s time, Farrell concludes darkly in this excellent and inspiring new book, to take some of that money back.

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 ... It is true that the agreeable tax environment of Wyoming is appealing to any billionaire, and Farrell is careful about his sampling methods, but certainly there is some self-selection going on here. When you study an idiosyncratic group of people who have chosen to live in such a unique place, it is not surprising in the least that they also tend to be those experiencing some disquietude about their extreme wealth ... One recurring frustration is that his otherwise commendable academic approach prevents him from making obvious moral assertions, but somehow doesn’t prevent him from walking the reader to the threshold of value judgements and allowing them to take the obvious next step ... Even with these problems, the subject matter here is inherently interesting, and Farrell is an effective writer (other than his obnoxious, pretentious over-use of italics and the word 'veneer') ... Much of the book, moreover, is obviously of value to social science ... Value-free social science probably isn’t possible. But in falling so short of it, in cheaply incorporating an anti-capitalist dimension based on the wealthy’s inauthenticity, all the while maintaining its pretense (we won’t say veneer), Billionaire Wilderness leaves behind a residue that could easily have been avoided.

Farrell brings a good mixture of information and perspectives to his research ... Farrell clearly outlines the roots of the problems: policy, western mythologies, tax breaks, and selfishness. As a reader, I wanted more analysis of what could bring both economic justice and land protections to areas like Teton County. Billionaire Wilderness ponders what makes a good community in the 21st century; Farrell mentions trust and empathy, government incentives for smart growth and community development, and local policies designed to do less harm to low-income residents. But he doesn’t squarely answer the question. Perhaps with so many conflicting interests, there is simply no clear answer.

... 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 ... That [Farrell] got so many very rich people to talk to him is an accomplishment. His ability to endure the self-satisfaction, vapidity, and lack of humor in most of his very rich subjects is also remarkable ... Some of what the very rich interviewees tell Farrell he accepts with a touching lack of skepticism. Though he is constantly 'digging deeper,' the idea that wealth is morally neutral in its origins goes pretty much unchallenged ... Farrell is looking for that kind of deep, spiritual motivation in the attachment the very rich people feel for Wyoming, but it’s not there as it is in the devotees of the buffalo or the wolf. He keeps pursuing a faith model, when a more useful model might be addiction ... the idea that greed might be “morally risky” gets passing mention. But seen in the context of addiction, the work that takes the very rich to the brink of collapse and endangerment of their well-being as they’re acquiring unnecessary additional wealth is an example of addictive behavior ... By delegating the job of interviewing the Latino subjects to the nonprofit whose identity he disguises (though it must be easy to guess which nonprofit it is), the author puts us at a remove from the poorest residents. Physical description of the interview subjects does not figure much in the book. People are characterized by what they say. As you go along, you keep waiting for comment from anyone besides the very rich, but there’s not a direct quote from a Latino person until far into the book... the places where the poor live aren’t. We’re told that many in the work force of Teton County must commute over a dangerous mountain pass, but Farrell doesn’t say where the pass is or what driving it is like. He must have driven it himself, maybe many times, but he doesn’t retrace it for our edification in the book.

Farrell has double credentials as a Yale sociology professor and a native of Wyoming. That helped him gain access to secretive wealthy residents, and he does a good job in exploring the attitudes not only of the poor — the focus of many previous researchers — but also the rich. He describes their delusions that poor local employers such as builders are friends, and the ironic frustrations of some with arriviste financiers and Silicon Valley billionaires ... This book makes for uncomfortable reading in its criticism of the rich, although the author’s sources are saved personal embarrassment because they have been anonymised ... It is not the lightest read: the text is fortunately not overburdened by too many academic theories. But Farrell has divided the chapters into rigid themes, and so has missed an opportunity to tell narrative stories and explore the relations between rich and poor in a more natural way ... He might also have expanded on that other trope of philanthropy: a belief by the rich that they are more effective in giving directly than financing the state through their taxes.

The book contains some sections packed with academic jargon, including one about the research methodology underlying the 200-plus in-depth interviews of the wealthy and the working poor who serve them in various capacities ... An eye-opening look at a specific element of economic and social inequality.