While researching and writing his new book, “Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West,” Justin Farrell, a professor of sociology at the Yale School of the Environment, spent five years in Teton County, Wyoming — the richest county in the United States and the one with the greatest income inequality. He conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews with the area’s working poor and with the ultra-wealthy who come from across the country to find a paradise in this awe-inspiring wilderness.
We were eager to find out more about his work and what he learned about wealth concentration and environmental conservation in this corner of the rapidly changing American West.