"Dwight Billings and Kathleen Blee examine the making of wealth and inequality in persistently poor rural communities through the history of Clay Country, an especially poor section of the Eastern Kentucky mountains in Appalachia. Though this area has been the target of repeated antipoverty and economic development programs, few of these have had a lasting impact. The authors uncover the systemic problems and patterns of low income by tracing the economic, sociocultural, and political development of Clay County from early agricultural and industrial development in the nineteenth century to the advent of the timber and coal industry in the twentieth century."--BOOK JACKET.