Running on Empty is a road book in the mold of Steinbeck's Travels With Charley, Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways and Kerouac's On the Road. Along his 12,000-mile sojourn around the United States, Peter Michael hears story after story of the growing economic disparity which has plagued the country for the past generation, stalled the middle class, and made the poor poorer. In a fascinating travelogue of the people, stories, land forms and places this inveterate traveler meets, Michael includes a critique demolishing plutocrat arguments in an eminently readable exposé on economic inequality and how the rich and corporations purchase it through the protection money called campaign contributions. Running on Empty was awarded two national book prizes, one in political and economic affairs, the other in travel essays.