The rapid expansion of Northwest Arkansas’ population serves as a portrait of social change that will become more common as corporations continue to transform America’s small towns, author Marjorie Rosen said Wednesday.

“It’s amazing,” she said of the diversity that corporate recruiting at companies like Wal-Mart brought to the region. “It’s fascinating. It’s changing the nature of small town America.”

Rosen, an associate journalism professor at Lehman College-CUNY, spoke to a group of University of Arkansas at Fayetteville students on a promotional tour for her book Boom Town: How Wal-Mart Transformed An All-American Town into an International Community.

Through her writing, Rosen paints a picture of Bentonville and its surrounding communities as a region whose small-town ...