The Global War on Morris (A Novel)

“Writing in the full-tilt style of Carl Hiaasen” (The Washington Post), this jaundiced political satire was ripped from the headlines and penned by an author 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 offices along his sales route, and in a moment of weakness charges a non-business expense to his company credit card. No big deal. Easy mistake.

But the government’s top-secret surveillance program, anchored by a giant, complex supercomputer known as NICK, thinks differently. NICK begins to thread together the connected strands of Morris’s life—his friends, family, his traffic violations, his daughter’s political leanings, his wife’s new patients, and even his failed romantic endeavors—and Morris becomes the government’s public enemy number one.

In his “laugh-out-loud funny” (Chris Matthews) debut novel, author “Steve Israel reveals his inner Jon Stewart” (Daily News, New York). The Global War on Morris toes the line between recent breaking headlines and a future that is not that difficult to imagine: “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” (Library Journal).