I picked out this book after hearing a strong recommendation from [a:Anne Helen Petersen|7219002|Anne Helen Petersen|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1596205069p2/7219002.jpg]. Ryanne Pilgeram writes an anthropology of rural gentrification, using as her example the small town of Dover, Idaho - a few miles away from Sandpoint, where I spent many years as a youth.

In comparison to other critiques of gentrification, Pilgeram looks at the systems and economic forces that drive economic change, and how the people are impacted. She critiques capitalism, and particularly seeing that capitalism must expand geographically to strive, or destroy spaces and people and shift the target of profit.

Dover had been a fishing site for the Kalispel people before the American expansion. As America expanded westward, land and resources were granted to oligarchs like the railroad companies, who then used "their" land to extract profit from the timber resources in areas like Dover. Dover became a wood mill to process the timber and timber products. But as the timber industry processed all that could be processed, Dover's mill shut down, adn the people working it were unemployed. The area then shifted to a site for recreation-based tourism, and became a site for second homes and retirement homes.

I saw this happen in the area of rural Montana that I grew up in, and in Sandpoint, and in Dover. I've seen it happen in the town that I live in now. I've never read a more grounded, fascinating, or TRUE exploration of the economic processes that have changed America and Americans.

HIGHLY recommended and well worth time to read.