Skip to content
Responsive image
Vendor
Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories

THE GLOBAL WAR ON MORRIS

Steve Israel

A witty political satire ripped from the headlines and written by Congressman Steve Israel, who’s met the characters, heard the conversations, and seen the plot twists firsthand.
Meet Morris Feldstein, a pharmaceutical salesman living and working in western Long Island who loves the Mets, loves his wife Rona, and loves things just the way they are. He doesn’t enjoy the news; he doesn’t like to argue. Rona may want to change the world; Morris wants the world to leave him alone. Morris does not make waves.

But one day Morris is seduced by a lonely, lovesick receptionist at one of the doctors’ offices along his sales route, and in a moment of weakness charges a non-business expense to his company credit card. No big deal, you might think. Easy mistake. But the government’s top-secret surveillance program, anchored by a giant, complex supercomputer known as NICK, thinks differently. Eventually NICK begins to thread together the largely disparate and tenuously connected strands of Morris’s life—his friends, family, friends’ friends, his traffic violations, his daughter’s political leanings, his wife’s new patients, and even his failed romantic endeavors—and Morris becomes the US government’s new public enemy number one.

A hilarious, debut novel from a charismatic author, The Global War on Morris toes the line between recent breaking headlines and a future that is not that difficult to imagine.

Congressman Steve Israel was sworn into office in 2001 and serves in the House Leadership as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee since 2010. He represents New York’s third Congressional District, including the communities of Huntington, North Hempstead, Queens, Oyster Bay, and Smithtown. Born and raised in Brooklyn and on Long Island, Israel graduated from George Washington University.
Available products
Book

Published 2015-01-06 by Simon & Schuster

Book

Published 2015-01-06 by Simon & Schuster

Comments

Hilarity and broad satire of the bureaucracy ensue….Why read this when one can see Washington insiders acting like buffoons in farcical situation on CNN? This is funnier than Wolf Blitzer, that’s why.

The Global War on Morris is a great, smart, and funny read.

Rep. Steve Israel reveals his inner Jon Stewart in his debut novel....The book amounts to a critique of what Israel deems the overreaching of the Bush-Cheney efforts.

Interview Read more...

If Joseph Heller had served in Congress instead of the Second World War, he might have written The Global War on Morris instead of Catch-22. Congressman Steve Israel‘s tale of how the war on terror sweeps up an unassuming salesman from Long Island is both darkly hilarious and hilariously dark. Somehow Israel has combined his access to top secret national security briefings with a finely tuned sense of the absurd as he skewers Washington bureaucrats, Machiavellian politicians, and a certain Darth Vader-like Vice President. On every page he displays a wicked wit and an irony that never descends into bitterness.

Brandishing biting wit and a Washington insider's perspective, U.S. Congressman Steve Israel (New York) takes aim at the United States' global war on terror--revealing true casualties--in his hilariously shrewd first novel…. Israel's wicked sense of humor highlights the absurdity of his subject matter….Readers will doubtlessly find analogs to Israel's exaggerated characters among their coworkers, neighbors, maybe even family.

Interview Read more...

Interview Read more...

I haven‘t Iaughed so hard since read my last novel. Steve Israel is as funny, witty, and satirical on paper as he is in person. He‘s also a master of political insight and an accurate observer of Washington absurdities. The Global War on Morris is a bipartisan skewer that will annoy both sides of the aisle. At a time when America could use a good Iaugh, Congressman Israel comes to the rescue. Fast and furious, fair and balanced. Agreat read!

The Global War on Morris is a laugh-out-loud funny book. I don’t mean a chuckle here or there. This yarn by Congressman Steve Israel is downright hilarious.

[I]t’s an unexpected delight to find “The Global War on Morris,” a political satire by Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), so spirited and funny... writing in the full-tilt style of Carl Hiaasen, Israel... skewer[s] his way through one gaffe after another in the fight against domestic terrorism. Imagine 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World' with a soupcon of al-Qaeda.

This very funny political satire, set in 2004, reads like it could have sprung from the keyboard of Christopher Buckley.... As political satires go, it's really good; as debut novels go, it's even better.