ACKNOWL­E DGMENTS

During my childhood summers I would, along with my two b ­ rothers,

Josh and Jordan, accompany my mom to the homes she cleaned.
Depending on the week, ­she’d clean about seven dif­f er­ent ­houses.
They ­were all quite large, and my mom worked alone, so ­she’d spend
a good part of the day scrubbing, bleaching, vacuuming, dusting,
sweeping, mopping, and making sure ­things ­were tidy for when the
­owners returned home from work. We’d always have the volume of
their tele­vi­sion up loud enough to hear the Price Is Right game show,
listening eagerly if the contestant struck it rich, or at least won a new
midsize sedan.
At the time, it was strange and exciting to spend so much time
in ­these expensive homes, and even though we ­were ­there with my
mom to scrub toilets and change sheets, it gave us a small win­dow
into affluence.
My mom always seemed grateful for the work and mostly spoke
well of the wealthier folks whose homes she cleaned. Back then, it
all seemed so straightforward: ­these wealthy families chose not to
clean their homes themselves, and my mom could use the money.
­Simple enough—­a straightforward exchange. And before writing
this book, I h ­ adn’t given ­these childhood experiences much more
thought. But now looking back, I can see the imprint of ­these seem-
ingly inconsequential experiences all throughout this proj­ect, begin-
ning most importantly with the initial curiosity to think more deeply
about who ­these ­people ­were, and their relationship to ­people like
my mom.
Conducting scientific research on the wealthy is notoriously diffi-
cult, and thus I relied heavi­ly on, and am indebted to, a huge number

ix
x Ac k n ow l­e d g m e nt s

of ­people. This book was far and away the most challenging piece of
research and writing I’ve ever done (and likely ever w ­ ill do), and I
certainly could not have gone at it alone. What y­ ou’re holding is the
product of many, many individuals.
I owe my biggest debt of gratitude to the respondents who made
this book pos­si­ble, beginning with the fifty low-­income interview-
ees. Many of ­these folks are recent immigrants, work multiple jobs,
fear f­ amily separation, live in poverty, and have e­ very good reason to
decline being interviewed for a proj­ect like this. I sincerely hope that
I have accurately represented the complexity of your hard-­won views
and experiences. I am also grateful for the local organ­ization (who
requested to go unnamed for fear of retribution from its donors) and
interviewers who graciously worked with me to collect a representa-
tive sample and conduct interviews in Spanish. Your commitment to
the community and to its working-­poor and immigrant population
was, and is, truly inspiring.
Of course, this study would be nowhere without the generosity
of the hundreds of ultra-­wealthy p ­ eople who took the time to be
interviewed and/or observed in your homes, at your private clubs,
at fund­rais­ing events, on the phone, in cities on the East and West
Coasts, at local restaurants, and on the local hiking trails. Throughout
this long pro­cess, I met many wonderful ­people and made several
new friends in Teton County and in Bozeman/Big Sky/Yellowstone
Club. As I write in the introduction, I am especially appreciative for
your willingness to participate, ­because researchers have had a very
difficult time getting access to your population, which has led to a
popu­lar reliance on uninformed clichés and cheap exposés that per-
petuate a hackneyed “rich and famous” ste­reo­type. This study is
certainly not perfect, but please know that throughout the years of
research, I’ve attempted to honestly understand each of your lives
with accuracy, generosity, fairness, and clarity. While some of the
findings of this study are at times quite critical, my hope is that with
your help I’ve collected reliable information and drawn conclusions
with integrity that have improved our basic knowledge of a growing
class of ­people in the United States, and their increasingly impor­tant
influence on the environment and local communities.
 Ac k n ow l­e d g m e nt s xi

I also owe a debt of gratitude to many locals who may not have
been interviewed, but ­were indispensable for making connections,
providing quantitative data, reading drafts, and keeping me abreast
of local issues. First, I especially want to thank David and Cathy
Loevner for their generosity and support, allowing my ­family to stay
in their guest ­house during long periods of fieldwork. ­Because of the
exorbitant housing costs in Teton County, I would not have been
able to complete the fieldwork for this proj­ect without David and
Cathy’s generosity. Thank you. Similarly, I am grateful for the local
support of community leaders, especially Lety Liera, Isabel Zumel,
Rev. Mary Erickson, Jonathan Schechter, Charles Pinkava, and sev-
eral organ­izations and individuals who have requested to remain
anonymous.
I am grateful to my academic community at Yale University and
beyond, made up of many ­people I now call friends. In par­tic­u­lar,
Kathryn McConnell was a truly fantastic research assistant in the
early days of the proj­ect, was instrumental throughout the entire
interview and data collection pro­cess, and has been a valuable con-
versation partner over the years. My dean, Sir Peter Crane, was very
supportive of the proj­ect from its early stages, and provided addi-
tional funding for the fieldwork. Similarly, Mary Evelyn Tucker and
John Grim have always been extraordinarily generous and kind col-
leagues. Pete Raymond, Mark Bradford, and Ben Cashore have been
indispensable sounding boards as I have attempted to navigate the
foreboding gauntlet of the Yale tenure track.
Chris Smith read multiple drafts, and at times talked me off the
ledge in some of the darker days of the proj­ect. I remain so grateful
for my training at the University of Notre Dame and to the commu-
nity of friends and scholars ­there who continue to sustain me. James
Leep did nothing, but selfishly requested that I acknowledge him.
I am grateful for the many other p­ eople who listened with sincer-
ity and challenged me in vari­ous ways, including Paul Burow, Susan
Clark, Jordan Holsinger, Dave Everson, Ben Robinson, Charlie Betti­
gole, Chuck Marshall, Liam Brennan, and the penetrating calls for
peace, justice, and care for the earth in the homilies of the late Fr. Bob
Beloin. My curious and critical gradu­ate and undergraduate students
xii Ac k n ow l­e d g m e nt s

at Yale have also helped me more than they know. I am thankful to

have such a ­great editor Meagan Levinson at Prince­ton University
Press, who has been with me since my first book and believed in
this proj­ect from the very beginning. I also want to thank Michèle
Lamont for sharing her interview guide, which was essential during
the design of the research.
Finally, rather than thanking my ­family, I prob­ably owe them an
apology. At times, the fieldwork and writing of this book consumed
me, and when I lost perspective, my wife, Ashley, was ­there to see
through the pedantic academic nonsense and bring me back down
to earth. Further, she incisively contributed to many of the book’s
main ideas, drawing on her own experiences in nonprofit develop-
ment with wealthy philanthropists. My light, my love, and my moral
compass, she’s put up with me for seventeen years, and I truly do not
know where I would be without her. And none of this would mean
anything without our ­daughters, Ruby and River, who make it easy
to see the big picture of why anything means anything.
I dedicate this book to my older ­brother Josh, who died in a car
accident. In addition to accompanying my mom to clean wealthy
folks’ ­houses, we also spent our childhood summers exploring the
changing landscapes and towns that make up this book. Revisiting
­these places during the fieldwork brought both im­mense pain and
inexpressible joy, but it was so worth it to feel ­those feelings again,
viscerally and unpredictably brought to the surface by the smell of
the sagebrush, the sound of the whispering pines, and the crunch of
the gravel where we used to pedal our bikes. Selfishly, d­ oing research
in this place transports me to times past, allowing me for a moment
to revisit Josh’s wild spirit and experience anew our most sacred
memories.
B I LLI O NAI R E WI LD E R N E S S