Product Description

The road trip is a staple of modern American literature. But nowhere in American literature, until now, has a left-wing economist hit the road, observing and interpreting the extraordinary range and spectacle of U.S. life, bringing out its conflicts and contradictions with humor and insight.

Disillusioned with academic life after thirty-two years teaching economics, Michael D. Yates took early retirement in 2001, with a pension account that had doubled during the dot.com frenzy of the late 1990s. He and his wife Karen sold their house, got rid of their belongings, and have moved around the country since then, often spending months at a time on the road. Michael and Karen spent the summer of 2001 in Yellowstone National Park, where Michael worked as a hotel front-desk clerk. They moved to Manhattan for a year, where he worked for Monthly Review. From there they went to Portland, Oregon, to explore the Pacific Northwest. After five months of travel in Summer and Fall 2004, they settled in Miami Beach. Ahead of the 2005 hurricane season, they went back on the road, settling this time in Colorado.

Cheap Motels and a Hotplate is both an account of their adventures and a penetrating examination of work and inequality, race and class, alienation and environmental degradation in the small towns and big cities of the contemporary United States.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #471605 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-01
• Released on: 2007-03-19
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

From the Author
MICHAEL D. YATES is associate editor of Monthly Review. He was professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown for many years. He is the author of Naming the System: Inequality and Work in the Global Economy and Why Unions Matter.

About the Author

Michael D. Yates is associate editor of Monthly Review. He was professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown for many years. He is the author of Naming the System: Inequality and Work in the Global Economy and Why Unions Matter.

Customer Reviews

boring
Boring
Need better editing. Good nuggets of writing buried in pompous blather.
Need more concise editing

Don't waste your time and money
I had to read this book for class and it was a complete waste of time. I don't understand why this guy is driving around the U.S. in a minivan if he calls himself an environmentalist and if he is so unhappy with the U.S., why don't he just move the Cuba. But besides the questions I have about this book, I still think it is not worth reading. He provides detailed descriptions of what he and his wife does on their trips like we should care. If you would like to know about a place's demographics, tourist attractions, culture, socioeconomic status, and so on, there is something free to everyone called the internet. Please do yourself a favor and forget about this book.

Interesting Reading
This book focuses on specific areas of the country, giving personal views of the beauty or ugliness of each place and of how income and lifestyle affect them. It gave some statistics to back up the author's perceptions. Reading his personal experiences in traveling through and living in the many places held my interest throughout the book.