From the 1950s to the 1970s, the Canadian government relocated people living in rural and urban communities, often against their will, in order to alleviate the all-too-common lack of social services and economic opportunities. Moved by the State offers a completely new interpretation of this undertaking, focusing on the bureaucrats and academics who designed and implemented these relocations - and on the larger development project they were pursuing. Tina Loo's finely crafted history reveals the optimistic belief underpinning postwar relocations: the power of the interventionist state to do good.