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The Global War on Morris
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.
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.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published December 30, 2014
37 people are currently reading
935 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 95 reviews
December 31, 2014
Let’s be honest: The bar is low for a novel by a member of Congress. One feels grateful if the book doesn’t commit a crime or humiliate itself in a public restroom.
So it’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. Yes, as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Israel presided over his party’s drubbing last month, but if the new Republican majority dismantles Obamacare, at least he can remind us that laughter is the best medicine.
Israel’s debut novel lambastes the George W. Bush administration for perverting the battle against terrorism into an elaborate assault on civil rights here at home. In the pages of “The Global War on Morris,” the president himself stays mostly offstage — not so much innocent as wholly controlled by the three stooges of political evil: Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and especially Dick Cheney.
These are, admittedly, soft, stale targets for a salvo of precision-guided gags. The administration that led us into a war “to rid this world of evil,” that torturously disavowed torture, that turned a desert upside-down to find weapons of mass disappearance — that administration didn’t leave much on the table for a satirist to exaggerate. (Yes, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy really was flagged at several airports as a possible terrorist.) Has any political cartoon ever captured the whole spectrum of Cheney’s sneer? What parody could possibly embellish Rove’s paranoia? What farce could ever hyperbolize Libby’s cynicism? But writing in the full-tilt style of Carl Hiaasen, Israel takes on those challenges, skewering 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. The sharpest moments in this novel of short chapters — most of them, reportedly, written on the congressman’s iPhone — take place through “the side entrance that led to the back steps that climbed to the dim corridor that brought you to the Vice President’s office.” There, at the center of a network of sycophants, Cheney stirs the cauldron of our nation’s anxieties about “terrorists, jihadists, liberals.” He whines about how soft Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has gone, snickers at constitutional rights and calculates how best to manipulate the terror alert system before the Republican convention. “Don’t raise it too high,” Rove chimes in. “Has to be credible. Can’t look political.”
For more sensitive shenanigans, Israel sneaks us into “one of the underground, undisclosed, undercover outposts of a Cheney-inspired project called COG (Continuity of Government).” In the event of a nuclear attack, the vice president would stay safe in COG, “riding out the survival of the United States,” taking comfort in “the entire works of Rush Limbaugh . . . , his favorite hunting rifle, and a list of major Republican National Committee donors who would be prioritized in any search and rescue operations as the nation emerged from its apocalypse.”
What gives the novel some pointed currency is the central object of Israel’s scorn: a super-secret surveillance project of such maniacal ambition that no one would ever believe it (except for anyone who read about the PRISM initiative in The Washington Post). Israel calls it NICK — “the Network Centric Total Information Collection, Integration, Synthesis, Assessment, Dissemination, and Deployment System.” Funded with money siphoned off a dozen innocuous departments such as the Office of the Assistant Deputy Secretary for National School Lunch Programs, NICK is the “ultimate voyeur” designed to perform “investigative triage in a country on threat overload.” To NICK, “everyone was either suspicious or a suspect, a patriot or a Democrat.” After gleefully explaining how NICK reads everyone’s mail, listens to everyone’s phone calls and tracks everyone’s purchases and movements, Libby insists, “This government does not spy on the American people.”
For the next 300 pages, the ridiculousness of that lie is etched on the life of a nebbishy nobody named Morris Feldstein, a pharmaceuticals sales rep in New York. Morris’s only ambition is to watch the Mets on TV. His “entire life was tucked in the safe confines of anonymity,” Israel tells us. “If Morris clung to any life philosophy, it was ‘Don’t make waves.’ ” “The epitome of boredom,” he avoids anxiety or trouble of any kind. He has never exceeded the speed limit or a library-book due date. He’s the straightest, dullest, pleasantest man imaginable — the ideal victim for Israel’s zany comedy about a secret government bureaucracy unleashed from any moral constraints.
In a perfect storm of ineptitude, fervency and technophilia, Cheney and a vast right-wing conspiracy of competing agencies become convinced that plain-vanilla Morris is actually a diabolical money man for a group of Islamic terrorists working minimum-wage jobs around the Paradise Hotel in Boca Raton, Fla. (Yes, they’ve finally gotten to paradise, but where are their virgins?) Hassan, the head terrorist, is the towel attendant at the pool, battling the infidels all day: “He took an oath to destroy them, to annihilate them, to consume them in a wrathful, unmerciful, apocalyptic fireball. But until then, he had to keep them dry.” At night in a tiny apartment, Hassan and his fellow warriors of Allah are growing soft on American food and culture: “He had been trained to resist the ear-splitting torture of hard rock. Not Enya. . . . It’s hard to effectuate a good snarl when your lips are orange from Doritos crumbs.”
These comic scenes about terrorists plotting bloody mayhem are the novel’s biggest gamble. One wrong cut and the whole thing could blow up in his face, but Israel works fairly well in those tight quarters without giving in to ugly anti-Muslim sentiments or appearing entirely naive about the threat of Islamic terrorism. In fact, at the center of the book, in a chapter not even a page long, we hear a CNN report about “the one-thousandth American death in Iraq.” And toward the end, Israel presents a scene constructed from parallel passages of violence from the Bible and the Koran. It’s a reminder that for all its silliness and sometimes flabby comedy, there’s blood pooling in the basement of this story.
In that way, Israel is working in the battle-scarred tradition of far better war satirists such as Charlie Chaplin, Joseph Heller and even Jon Stewart, who dare to make us laugh against the grisly background of senseless death and raw grief. For Israel, though, there is a sentimental reflex resisting the gravity of despair, which is not surprising: Despair may be the only mortal sin a true politician never commits. Ultimately, Israel is too undisciplined to write a really devastating satire and too wedded to the conventions of comedy to deny his characters a happy ending — even if it is glazed in heavy sarcasm. “Sure,” he says, “there were a few times when the Feds may have inadvertently spied on the harmless phone conversations of innocent Americans. Few, as in thousands. Or hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions. No one knew. The whole matter was classified. But that was a small price to pay for freedom, wasn’t it?”
Whether you think that is funny probably depends on whether you’re “a patriot or a Democrat.”
This review first appeared in The Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...
So it’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. Yes, as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Israel presided over his party’s drubbing last month, but if the new Republican majority dismantles Obamacare, at least he can remind us that laughter is the best medicine.
Israel’s debut novel lambastes the George W. Bush administration for perverting the battle against terrorism into an elaborate assault on civil rights here at home. In the pages of “The Global War on Morris,” the president himself stays mostly offstage — not so much innocent as wholly controlled by the three stooges of political evil: Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and especially Dick Cheney.
These are, admittedly, soft, stale targets for a salvo of precision-guided gags. The administration that led us into a war “to rid this world of evil,” that torturously disavowed torture, that turned a desert upside-down to find weapons of mass disappearance — that administration didn’t leave much on the table for a satirist to exaggerate. (Yes, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy really was flagged at several airports as a possible terrorist.) Has any political cartoon ever captured the whole spectrum of Cheney’s sneer? What parody could possibly embellish Rove’s paranoia? What farce could ever hyperbolize Libby’s cynicism? But writing in the full-tilt style of Carl Hiaasen, Israel takes on those challenges, skewering 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. The sharpest moments in this novel of short chapters — most of them, reportedly, written on the congressman’s iPhone — take place through “the side entrance that led to the back steps that climbed to the dim corridor that brought you to the Vice President’s office.” There, at the center of a network of sycophants, Cheney stirs the cauldron of our nation’s anxieties about “terrorists, jihadists, liberals.” He whines about how soft Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has gone, snickers at constitutional rights and calculates how best to manipulate the terror alert system before the Republican convention. “Don’t raise it too high,” Rove chimes in. “Has to be credible. Can’t look political.”
For more sensitive shenanigans, Israel sneaks us into “one of the underground, undisclosed, undercover outposts of a Cheney-inspired project called COG (Continuity of Government).” In the event of a nuclear attack, the vice president would stay safe in COG, “riding out the survival of the United States,” taking comfort in “the entire works of Rush Limbaugh . . . , his favorite hunting rifle, and a list of major Republican National Committee donors who would be prioritized in any search and rescue operations as the nation emerged from its apocalypse.”
What gives the novel some pointed currency is the central object of Israel’s scorn: a super-secret surveillance project of such maniacal ambition that no one would ever believe it (except for anyone who read about the PRISM initiative in The Washington Post). Israel calls it NICK — “the Network Centric Total Information Collection, Integration, Synthesis, Assessment, Dissemination, and Deployment System.” Funded with money siphoned off a dozen innocuous departments such as the Office of the Assistant Deputy Secretary for National School Lunch Programs, NICK is the “ultimate voyeur” designed to perform “investigative triage in a country on threat overload.” To NICK, “everyone was either suspicious or a suspect, a patriot or a Democrat.” After gleefully explaining how NICK reads everyone’s mail, listens to everyone’s phone calls and tracks everyone’s purchases and movements, Libby insists, “This government does not spy on the American people.”
For the next 300 pages, the ridiculousness of that lie is etched on the life of a nebbishy nobody named Morris Feldstein, a pharmaceuticals sales rep in New York. Morris’s only ambition is to watch the Mets on TV. His “entire life was tucked in the safe confines of anonymity,” Israel tells us. “If Morris clung to any life philosophy, it was ‘Don’t make waves.’ ” “The epitome of boredom,” he avoids anxiety or trouble of any kind. He has never exceeded the speed limit or a library-book due date. He’s the straightest, dullest, pleasantest man imaginable — the ideal victim for Israel’s zany comedy about a secret government bureaucracy unleashed from any moral constraints.
In a perfect storm of ineptitude, fervency and technophilia, Cheney and a vast right-wing conspiracy of competing agencies become convinced that plain-vanilla Morris is actually a diabolical money man for a group of Islamic terrorists working minimum-wage jobs around the Paradise Hotel in Boca Raton, Fla. (Yes, they’ve finally gotten to paradise, but where are their virgins?) Hassan, the head terrorist, is the towel attendant at the pool, battling the infidels all day: “He took an oath to destroy them, to annihilate them, to consume them in a wrathful, unmerciful, apocalyptic fireball. But until then, he had to keep them dry.” At night in a tiny apartment, Hassan and his fellow warriors of Allah are growing soft on American food and culture: “He had been trained to resist the ear-splitting torture of hard rock. Not Enya. . . . It’s hard to effectuate a good snarl when your lips are orange from Doritos crumbs.”
These comic scenes about terrorists plotting bloody mayhem are the novel’s biggest gamble. One wrong cut and the whole thing could blow up in his face, but Israel works fairly well in those tight quarters without giving in to ugly anti-Muslim sentiments or appearing entirely naive about the threat of Islamic terrorism. In fact, at the center of the book, in a chapter not even a page long, we hear a CNN report about “the one-thousandth American death in Iraq.” And toward the end, Israel presents a scene constructed from parallel passages of violence from the Bible and the Koran. It’s a reminder that for all its silliness and sometimes flabby comedy, there’s blood pooling in the basement of this story.
In that way, Israel is working in the battle-scarred tradition of far better war satirists such as Charlie Chaplin, Joseph Heller and even Jon Stewart, who dare to make us laugh against the grisly background of senseless death and raw grief. For Israel, though, there is a sentimental reflex resisting the gravity of despair, which is not surprising: Despair may be the only mortal sin a true politician never commits. Ultimately, Israel is too undisciplined to write a really devastating satire and too wedded to the conventions of comedy to deny his characters a happy ending — even if it is glazed in heavy sarcasm. “Sure,” he says, “there were a few times when the Feds may have inadvertently spied on the harmless phone conversations of innocent Americans. Few, as in thousands. Or hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions. No one knew. The whole matter was classified. But that was a small price to pay for freedom, wasn’t it?”
Whether you think that is funny probably depends on whether you’re “a patriot or a Democrat.”
This review first appeared in The Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...
August 29, 2017
The cover and title of THE GLOBAL WAR ON MORRIS are what initially caught my attention. Then I read a summary, and knew I wanted to read it. The story is a very intentional satire of the US government, written by congressman, Steve Israel, of whom, I confess, I had no prior knowledge (thank you wikipedia!).
The book centers around Morris Feldstein, Average Joe personified, who, quite unwillingly and unaware, becomes embroiled in a dubious plot that is found out by a government software called NICK, which is spying on all Americans to discover who is up to what. Obviously, this story borrows heavily from recent headlines, and is none-too-subtle either. However, I found it to be an easy, quick read, and though I cannot echo the sentiments of some of the book blurbs, which say this book is 'laugh-out-loud funny' and 'downright hilarious', it provoked the odd smile here and there.
Not a hugely memorable book, but not one I felt was a waste of time either. I have been reading a lot of classics and more serious literature lately for my studies, and so this was actually a nice little break.
I should say, anyone who has strong loyalties to Dick Cheney, or the Bush Administration will likely not be too fond of this book. As I do not, this book did not offend me beyond the fact that I was vaguely underwhelmed.
I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway, and have written, what I think is a fair and honest review. Thanks!
Find more reviews and bookish fun at http://www.princessandpen.com
The book centers around Morris Feldstein, Average Joe personified, who, quite unwillingly and unaware, becomes embroiled in a dubious plot that is found out by a government software called NICK, which is spying on all Americans to discover who is up to what. Obviously, this story borrows heavily from recent headlines, and is none-too-subtle either. However, I found it to be an easy, quick read, and though I cannot echo the sentiments of some of the book blurbs, which say this book is 'laugh-out-loud funny' and 'downright hilarious', it provoked the odd smile here and there.
Not a hugely memorable book, but not one I felt was a waste of time either. I have been reading a lot of classics and more serious literature lately for my studies, and so this was actually a nice little break.
I should say, anyone who has strong loyalties to Dick Cheney, or the Bush Administration will likely not be too fond of this book. As I do not, this book did not offend me beyond the fact that I was vaguely underwhelmed.
I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway, and have written, what I think is a fair and honest review. Thanks!
Find more reviews and bookish fun at http://www.princessandpen.com
February 5, 2015
This book has some very funny lines in it. I chuckled aloud several times. This is not a sumptuous, poetic novel. What it does well is make fun of the extremes we went to after 9/11 to keep people living in fear. I thought some of the funniest bits were when the members of various intelligence agencies rattled off about 50 acronyms in a row, each time having to explain what agency the acronyms stood for because no one could keep them all straight. Also very funny were all the parts told from the point of view of the would-be terrorists, especially the towel boy Hassan. About another would-be terrorist, I think the guy who was working at McDonald’s until he got the call to commit an actor of terror: “He had been trained to resist the earsplitting torture of hard rock. Not Enya.”
This is a funny, fast, fun read.
This is a funny, fast, fun read.
April 16, 2015
Loved this book! It takes place in the month of August 2004. Dick Cheney is at the height of his power. From his lair, he stretches his tentacles out to manipulate everything from terror alerts to traffic jams. His henchman, Scooter Libby, is willing to do anything – ANYTHING -- to maintain Cheney’s grip on the American Government. Oh, and keep George W. in the Oval Office.
Meanwhile in western Long Island, there is a pharmaceutical salesman who just wants to watch the Mets and Turner Classic Movies. He obeys his wife and tries not to make waves. His name is Morris Feldstein, and by making one small mistake becomes the target of the government’s top-secret surveillance program. Once the NSA is on Morris’ tail, everyone he knows starts generating dossiers back in Dick Cheney’s top secret installation.
I found this book hilarious. And I was glad to see that the author has not been wasting his time while in the House of Representatives.
Meanwhile in western Long Island, there is a pharmaceutical salesman who just wants to watch the Mets and Turner Classic Movies. He obeys his wife and tries not to make waves. His name is Morris Feldstein, and by making one small mistake becomes the target of the government’s top-secret surveillance program. Once the NSA is on Morris’ tail, everyone he knows starts generating dossiers back in Dick Cheney’s top secret installation.
I found this book hilarious. And I was glad to see that the author has not been wasting his time while in the House of Representatives.
February 27, 2019
A fun read with several interesting plot lines
October 12, 2015
After reading the back cover, I liked the premise of this book. The global war on terror gone too far, an innocent man woven into an ever denser and more terrifying web of government surveillance, a work of political satire written by an insider who was actually there. And as the reviews claimed it was "very funny political satire" with several readers "laughing out loud," I expected to be, well, laughing out loud most of the time.
Instead I found it utterly chilling. Perhaps that alone should make it a good book, as it makes all the government excesses ridiculed in the story seem plausible, and perhaps that was Steve Israel's main goal. It certainly lays bare all the government disfunction we know is there but hope will never go as horribly wrong as it did for poor Morris in this story.
But I also found some shortcomings in the writing. While the main characters of Morris and his wife Rona are pretty well drawn with all their Jewish idiosyncrasies (this is where I found myself chuckling a few times, like when even the terrorist Hassan starts saying "ya nu" because he can't help himself in the presence of Rona Feldstein), all the other characters are terribly stereotypical. I think partly this was the intent, but in my mind they needed more fleshing out. Otherwise the reader can't develop any feelings for them, and without getting into a character's head, the story is dead. There was too much describing and telling the reader about each new person instead of letting the reader learn on his own by following the dialog and action.
I have this beef with other others too, like Michael Crichton in Jurassic Park, and even Dan Brown in the Da Vinci Code: Great plot, but poor execution with weak characters. But Dan Brown and Michael Crichton have one advantage over Steve Israel: Their books were pageturners, whereas this one is not. It plods along fast enough, helped by very short chapters, that one keeps reading, but it all seems far too predictable.
Still, it was a fast read and I did like the plot. I wonder if I might have enjoyed it more (and been even more terrified by its plausibility) had I read it at the height of the Bush/Cheney years.
Instead I found it utterly chilling. Perhaps that alone should make it a good book, as it makes all the government excesses ridiculed in the story seem plausible, and perhaps that was Steve Israel's main goal. It certainly lays bare all the government disfunction we know is there but hope will never go as horribly wrong as it did for poor Morris in this story.
But I also found some shortcomings in the writing. While the main characters of Morris and his wife Rona are pretty well drawn with all their Jewish idiosyncrasies (this is where I found myself chuckling a few times, like when even the terrorist Hassan starts saying "ya nu" because he can't help himself in the presence of Rona Feldstein), all the other characters are terribly stereotypical. I think partly this was the intent, but in my mind they needed more fleshing out. Otherwise the reader can't develop any feelings for them, and without getting into a character's head, the story is dead. There was too much describing and telling the reader about each new person instead of letting the reader learn on his own by following the dialog and action.
I have this beef with other others too, like Michael Crichton in Jurassic Park, and even Dan Brown in the Da Vinci Code: Great plot, but poor execution with weak characters. But Dan Brown and Michael Crichton have one advantage over Steve Israel: Their books were pageturners, whereas this one is not. It plods along fast enough, helped by very short chapters, that one keeps reading, but it all seems far too predictable.
Still, it was a fast read and I did like the plot. I wonder if I might have enjoyed it more (and been even more terrified by its plausibility) had I read it at the height of the Bush/Cheney years.
November 5, 2014
Finished it last night, occasionally laughing out loud. I never thought I'd say (or write) this, but "Thank you, Congressman!"
February 12, 2017
VERY timely book... AGAIN, no less! Satire at its best...
Now, just imagine, you're in the dentist's waiting room and you lean over to move a magazine off a hardcover book lying there. It turns out to be a hilarious, sarcastic mashup of Walter Mitty and the Dept. of Homeland Security with a dollop of NSA Tech smeared across the cover. The receptionist calls you. What do you do?
Well, if the book is titled The Global War on Morris by Steve Israel, you pick up the book and make up an excuse on the fly, as to why you must reschedule the appointment. It's that good. Who could have known that my former Congressman had the storytelling chops and sense of dry, dark humor to rival the writing cast of The Daily Show? The story concerns a mild-mannered pharma rep from Great Neck, LI who is drawn into a Bush II -era NSA surveillance operation that somehow makes him the chief target. It is unforgettable and set so perfectly in the Long Island milieu that anyone reading this who has never visited New York's eastern suburbs will be able to cross it off the "to be visited" list confidently. Government can get ponderous in huge helpings, and the author's sideways glance into the workings of the post 9-11 Security mentality will leave you steamrolled and in stitches. Having lived on Long Island for more than half of my life, and seeing as I know these people pretty well, I'll keep mum on the rest. You'll just have to pick up a copy and find out the truth for yourself.
Now, just imagine, you're in the dentist's waiting room and you lean over to move a magazine off a hardcover book lying there. It turns out to be a hilarious, sarcastic mashup of Walter Mitty and the Dept. of Homeland Security with a dollop of NSA Tech smeared across the cover. The receptionist calls you. What do you do?
Well, if the book is titled The Global War on Morris by Steve Israel, you pick up the book and make up an excuse on the fly, as to why you must reschedule the appointment. It's that good. Who could have known that my former Congressman had the storytelling chops and sense of dry, dark humor to rival the writing cast of The Daily Show? The story concerns a mild-mannered pharma rep from Great Neck, LI who is drawn into a Bush II -era NSA surveillance operation that somehow makes him the chief target. It is unforgettable and set so perfectly in the Long Island milieu that anyone reading this who has never visited New York's eastern suburbs will be able to cross it off the "to be visited" list confidently. Government can get ponderous in huge helpings, and the author's sideways glance into the workings of the post 9-11 Security mentality will leave you steamrolled and in stitches. Having lived on Long Island for more than half of my life, and seeing as I know these people pretty well, I'll keep mum on the rest. You'll just have to pick up a copy and find out the truth for yourself.
February 13, 2024
What a hoot this was! Steve Israel, a congressman himself, has written quite a satirical send-up of governmental operations, set in the time of the George W. Bush administration. While it's fairly gentle in its portrayal of Bush, it's not so toward his advisors, Karl Rove, Scooter Liddy, or VP Dick Cheney. Morris, the title character, is a middle-aged Jewish pharmaceutical salesman, who somehow falls under the scrutiny of an invasive computer system that collects information on ordinary citizens. Things spin out of control, leading to suspicions, or assumptions may be a better word, that he is consorting with Islamic terrorists. The consequences prove disastrous, but the book somehow manages to thread the line between comical and seriously concerned about what still may be going on.
June 22, 2022
Rollicking farcical satire
This is a wonderfully devised comedy of errors...and not just because its protagonist is a Mets fan!
Add a star to this review if you're from New York (particularly Long Island), for the recognition you'll have for the environs, the personalities, and perhaps the 2004 Mets season. Even without that, it's fun to watch the plot unfold - or really, fold back in on itself - like some convoluted Rube Goldberg contraption. And you wind up surprisingly invested in the protagonist and his family.
Funny, sharp, and surprisingly affecting. Good stuff all around.
This is a wonderfully devised comedy of errors...and not just because its protagonist is a Mets fan!
Add a star to this review if you're from New York (particularly Long Island), for the recognition you'll have for the environs, the personalities, and perhaps the 2004 Mets season. Even without that, it's fun to watch the plot unfold - or really, fold back in on itself - like some convoluted Rube Goldberg contraption. And you wind up surprisingly invested in the protagonist and his family.
Funny, sharp, and surprisingly affecting. Good stuff all around.
November 25, 2016
What a hoot! Morris Feldstein, a pillar of society. Not one to make waves. Becomes the subject of a government terrorist investigation. The problem is the entire story is fabricated and Morris knows nothing about it. I laughed out loud reading this book. Now I hear it might be coming to TV. Sign me up!
November 5, 2019
Entertaining but serious.
Enjoyed it very much. I laughed out loud many times. However, the point is very serious. The atmosphere if enhancing the fear factor for our county needs to be brought out into the open and examined.
Enjoyed it very much. I laughed out loud many times. However, the point is very serious. The atmosphere if enhancing the fear factor for our county needs to be brought out into the open and examined.
January 10, 2026
I never thought anyone could put a comical spin on terrorism. But Steve Israel kept the seriousness of the subject matter and left the comedy to the fictional characters, all while illustrating flaws in our government that I’m sure most of us have felt at some point. A great read.
October 1, 2017
I liked the story a lot but I expected it to be a lot funnier. (That’s the expectation you encourage when Christopher Buckley is mentioned on your back cover ...)
December 9, 2017
A quick, funny read. Insightful satire of US surveillance and the War on Terror.
January 31, 2018
book came highly recommended by your friends book club. It was actually really stupid. The only saving grace is it was a quick read.
April 7, 2018
The plot is beyond silly and murky, but some good political insights and funny asides make this an entertaining read.
December 26, 2021
Just like Big Guns, if you like Carl Hiassen and Jimmy Buffett and Tim Dorsey you’ll love “Morris.” Very witty. Very funny. A turn of phrase, a rhyme here a rhyme there. 👍🏼
August 8, 2022
Morris never makes waves, but inadvertently gets connected with a drug scheme. Ho hum. Didn’t finish it.
December 9, 2022
A very funny LOL read!
May 21, 2023
(a solid 3.5)
November 11, 2018
First the positive: Steve Israel is imaginative and creative. He is adept at satire. He shares insights into the culture of the New York/New Jersey Jewish community, which I found enlightening. The main characters have some depth to them. He incorporates some nice twists and turns, constructing “coincidences” that draw the characters toward a collision course.
On the other hand, this book is distinctly partisan. I read a review that claimed it would appeal to readers from both sides of the political spectrum. Definitely not so.
Israel hates (and I mean HATES) Dick Cheney. (I’m not a huge fan of the guy, but OY VEY!) All Republicans are inept, power-hungry charlatans. Law enforcement agents are rabid, self-promoting zealots. The military is over-zealous and paranoid. Any person w/ a shred of patriotism who wants to defend and protect America is a xenophobic bigot. In Israel’s world, any enemies who want to do us harm are won over by American commercialism, opportunity, and simple gestures of kindness.
While the book was at times entertaining, I grew weary of the typical bleating of this sheep as he ridiculed the sheep dogs who keep him safe enough to remain in his Pollyanna dreamworld.
Oh, and did I mention that he HATES Dick Cheney?
On the other hand, this book is distinctly partisan. I read a review that claimed it would appeal to readers from both sides of the political spectrum. Definitely not so.
Israel hates (and I mean HATES) Dick Cheney. (I’m not a huge fan of the guy, but OY VEY!) All Republicans are inept, power-hungry charlatans. Law enforcement agents are rabid, self-promoting zealots. The military is over-zealous and paranoid. Any person w/ a shred of patriotism who wants to defend and protect America is a xenophobic bigot. In Israel’s world, any enemies who want to do us harm are won over by American commercialism, opportunity, and simple gestures of kindness.
While the book was at times entertaining, I grew weary of the typical bleating of this sheep as he ridiculed the sheep dogs who keep him safe enough to remain in his Pollyanna dreamworld.
Oh, and did I mention that he HATES Dick Cheney?
February 21, 2016
Eh. It's okay, but not the literary masterpiece that all of the editorial reviews are saying it is.
Israel isn't a bad writer, but there are a lot of visible "first novely" issues, including the rushed resolution (which takes place four years after the first 7/8s of the book); too many underdeveloped characters; and the setting being a town conveniently in Israel's congressional district ("I wonder what his margins will be in Great Neck in 2016?" was my snarky reaction before I learned he was retiring that cycle). These issues didn't make it unreadable, but they were noticeable and mildly distracting.
More to the point is that the comparisons to Catch-22 are overstated in a way that makes it obvious that anyone doing such a comparison doesn't understand bureaucratic satire. Primarily at issue is the fact that Israel, as a member of the Democratic leadership, benefits from such characterizations of his political opponents in ways that Heller did not, so there is an issue of ulterior motive for his day job. Also, the fact that he has a security clearance is distracting, because another author skewering Bush circa 2004 would have written a book that was similar, so the reader wastes time wondering how much of it is actually semi-true. Third, this book was written in 2015. Bush had been out of office for nearly two presidential terms, and satire about his administration became ridiculously passe long before then. If this book had come out in 2009, it would have been more effective, but by then, everyone else had moved on, so it just seems like Israel trying to score cheap political points against an opponent who left the ring a long time ago. Moreover, as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the disastrous 2014 election cycle, you'd think Israel would have been doing his job instead of writing this piece of self-indulgent fluff. Even if he's just incredibly good at multitasking, it still makes the Democratic leadership look bad because, taking media oversimplification of complex issues into account, it makes them look like nearly a decade later they'd still rather sit around whining about Bush than actually win elections.
Ultimately, this review is merely a laundry list of reasons why sitting politicians should not attempt contemporary political fiction. You can't write a biting anti-establishment satire if you're actively part of the establishment.
Israel isn't a bad writer, but there are a lot of visible "first novely" issues, including the rushed resolution (which takes place four years after the first 7/8s of the book); too many underdeveloped characters; and the setting being a town conveniently in Israel's congressional district ("I wonder what his margins will be in Great Neck in 2016?" was my snarky reaction before I learned he was retiring that cycle). These issues didn't make it unreadable, but they were noticeable and mildly distracting.
More to the point is that the comparisons to Catch-22 are overstated in a way that makes it obvious that anyone doing such a comparison doesn't understand bureaucratic satire. Primarily at issue is the fact that Israel, as a member of the Democratic leadership, benefits from such characterizations of his political opponents in ways that Heller did not, so there is an issue of ulterior motive for his day job. Also, the fact that he has a security clearance is distracting, because another author skewering Bush circa 2004 would have written a book that was similar, so the reader wastes time wondering how much of it is actually semi-true. Third, this book was written in 2015. Bush had been out of office for nearly two presidential terms, and satire about his administration became ridiculously passe long before then. If this book had come out in 2009, it would have been more effective, but by then, everyone else had moved on, so it just seems like Israel trying to score cheap political points against an opponent who left the ring a long time ago. Moreover, as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the disastrous 2014 election cycle, you'd think Israel would have been doing his job instead of writing this piece of self-indulgent fluff. Even if he's just incredibly good at multitasking, it still makes the Democratic leadership look bad because, taking media oversimplification of complex issues into account, it makes them look like nearly a decade later they'd still rather sit around whining about Bush than actually win elections.
Ultimately, this review is merely a laundry list of reasons why sitting politicians should not attempt contemporary political fiction. You can't write a biting anti-establishment satire if you're actively part of the establishment.
June 3, 2015
Picked this up at the library because I liked the title and the inside jacket description was intriguing. And at first the book delivered. A sort of funny main character, dripping in stereotypes. More caricatures in subsequent chapters, those evil republicans that ran the US government during Bush II. Lots of fun Government Acronym Salad (GAS), lots of fun idiosyncratic GAS bureaucracy.
But that was it. Nothing bloomed in this fertile soil. The stereotypes stayed stereotypes, and the so-called climax came half-way through the book. This comedy of errors ended up being nothing more than a parody of itself. And a boring one at that.
And since the climax came half-way through the novel, the ending was drawn-out and tedious. And fell flat. Maybe the difficulty for the writer was that he was trying to base this on too much reality, and just as the Bush II era kinda fell flat and ended lamely, so too the book. Too many punches pulled, too many opportunities skipped over.
In my opinion, this was a novel that tried to excoriate but also poke fun, and you really can’t do both at the same time. Not if you want to stay historically accurate. Novels require larger-than-life characters or plots, or at the very least, larger-than-life themes. The Global War on Morris has none of these.
It has an old man who makes only a few mistakes, that aren’t really mistakes, and an actual malefactor who goes entirely unpunished. Only in writing this, in a review does such a juxtaposition warrant analysis; in the novel itself, these factors are minutiae lost in the details of the aforementioned GAS.
I guess we were supposed to marvel at a conservative-built computer AI that made all of the decisions leading to our reluctant protagonist’s suffering. If this is supposed to be a symbol of Red State Paranoia, it was meagerly applied. RSP would have everyone flagged as a potential threat to our nation, and I found myself not really caring what happened to anybody in this novel.
Except that actual malefactor I mentioned, and as I said, nothing happened to him. I finished the book dissatisfied.
But that was it. Nothing bloomed in this fertile soil. The stereotypes stayed stereotypes, and the so-called climax came half-way through the book. This comedy of errors ended up being nothing more than a parody of itself. And a boring one at that.
And since the climax came half-way through the novel, the ending was drawn-out and tedious. And fell flat. Maybe the difficulty for the writer was that he was trying to base this on too much reality, and just as the Bush II era kinda fell flat and ended lamely, so too the book. Too many punches pulled, too many opportunities skipped over.
In my opinion, this was a novel that tried to excoriate but also poke fun, and you really can’t do both at the same time. Not if you want to stay historically accurate. Novels require larger-than-life characters or plots, or at the very least, larger-than-life themes. The Global War on Morris has none of these.
It has an old man who makes only a few mistakes, that aren’t really mistakes, and an actual malefactor who goes entirely unpunished. Only in writing this, in a review does such a juxtaposition warrant analysis; in the novel itself, these factors are minutiae lost in the details of the aforementioned GAS.
I guess we were supposed to marvel at a conservative-built computer AI that made all of the decisions leading to our reluctant protagonist’s suffering. If this is supposed to be a symbol of Red State Paranoia, it was meagerly applied. RSP would have everyone flagged as a potential threat to our nation, and I found myself not really caring what happened to anybody in this novel.
Except that actual malefactor I mentioned, and as I said, nothing happened to him. I finished the book dissatisfied.
July 25, 2015
I absolutely loved this book. If you're interested in politics, current affairs, technology, conspiracy theories, and all of the nonsense we need to put up with on a daily basis, but you have a sense of humor about it all, you'll love it, too!
In a hilarious send-up of modern post-9/11 American life, with a decidedly Jewish twist, sitting congressman Steve Israel gives us the gift of a story of a man who, well, gets caught up in a bunch of intrigue that he'd be the least likely person in history to experience. I've heard 'The Global War on Morris' described as being laugh-out-loud funny.... I wouldn't go that far, but I'd say that I averaged more than a chuckle or laugh per page, from beginning to end.
Mr. Israel (I'll have to check out his background- seems too bright for Congress) writes extremely well and does a great job describing the daily challenges faced by Morris, who only wants to do his job, return to his home on Long Island, watch Mets' games and black & white movies, and eat take-out for dinner. Unfortunately, for him, our federal guardians (about 2 dozen acronyms strong) draw different conclusions based on his actions.... the rest is history, as they say.
This book, which I picked up on a whim, is one of the most enjoyable I've read recently. I recommend it highly!
In a hilarious send-up of modern post-9/11 American life, with a decidedly Jewish twist, sitting congressman Steve Israel gives us the gift of a story of a man who, well, gets caught up in a bunch of intrigue that he'd be the least likely person in history to experience. I've heard 'The Global War on Morris' described as being laugh-out-loud funny.... I wouldn't go that far, but I'd say that I averaged more than a chuckle or laugh per page, from beginning to end.
Mr. Israel (I'll have to check out his background- seems too bright for Congress) writes extremely well and does a great job describing the daily challenges faced by Morris, who only wants to do his job, return to his home on Long Island, watch Mets' games and black & white movies, and eat take-out for dinner. Unfortunately, for him, our federal guardians (about 2 dozen acronyms strong) draw different conclusions based on his actions.... the rest is history, as they say.
This book, which I picked up on a whim, is one of the most enjoyable I've read recently. I recommend it highly!
January 17, 2015
This work is a humorous satirical depiction of America's War on Terror. It involves a number of our favorite political figures including Vice President Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, Karl Rove along with a cast of alphabet soup government agencies with overlapping jurisdictions all competing for their share of the "big bust." Caught in the middle of all this is meek and mild-mannered Jewish pharmaceutical salesman Morris Feldstein from Long Island, NY. Inadvertently, while attempting to engage in his one and only marital indiscretion, he becomes the target of the US government's effort to neutralize a suspected terrorist sleeper cell operating out of Boca Raton, Florida. Their target is the 2004 Presidential Debate between George Bush and John Kerry. What ensues is something out of the Keystone Cops and Morris's normally dull life is changed forever.
This would have been much more funny had there not been a ring of truth to it. Yes, terrorism is bad but we must be vigilant not to surrender our rights in order to combat it. Given the author is a US Congressman, I suspect he based a great deal of this book, at least in part, on his own personal experiences. After having worked for the federal government for 35 years myself, much of this book sounded vaguely familiar to me.
This would have been much more funny had there not been a ring of truth to it. Yes, terrorism is bad but we must be vigilant not to surrender our rights in order to combat it. Given the author is a US Congressman, I suspect he based a great deal of this book, at least in part, on his own personal experiences. After having worked for the federal government for 35 years myself, much of this book sounded vaguely familiar to me.
July 30, 2016
Morris
I received a review copy of this book from Goodreads. This delightful satire about former president and vice president (Chaney and Bush – who had which title?) claims that all statements presented by the two politicians are true – he does not make that same claim for Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, etc. Written by a former congressman, we learn of life-long government employees who practically run the federal government by themselves, have the power to create new jobs for themselves, and, best of all, have a secret maxi-computer (NICK) which spies on everyone and seriously mixes up info. It is a fun read, almost as fun as reading The Donald's retorts to anything and everything. The debut novel could have used a proofreader and editor (e.g., caddy-corner) but was so accurate about that administration that governed by imposing FEAR on Americans - the Donald must have read this book.
I received a review copy of this book from Goodreads. This delightful satire about former president and vice president (Chaney and Bush – who had which title?) claims that all statements presented by the two politicians are true – he does not make that same claim for Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, etc. Written by a former congressman, we learn of life-long government employees who practically run the federal government by themselves, have the power to create new jobs for themselves, and, best of all, have a secret maxi-computer (NICK) which spies on everyone and seriously mixes up info. It is a fun read, almost as fun as reading The Donald's retorts to anything and everything. The debut novel could have used a proofreader and editor (e.g., caddy-corner) but was so accurate about that administration that governed by imposing FEAR on Americans - the Donald must have read this book.
January 23, 2015
Poor Morris.
I received this book that day that I heard an NPR story about it. It was written by sitting Congressman Steve Israel on his smartphone, and much of it is inspired by true events (government alarmed by elderly Quakers!). It is the best sort of satire, that pokes fun at every side (but, fortunately for me, mainly at the Bush administration). It is smart, hilarious, and hard to put down.
I read a review that said you will literally laugh out loud, which I took with a grain of salt. How often does one actually laugh anymore? Well, it was true. This book truly did make me laugh in the final chase sequence when all of the tension and drama leads to one hilarious statement by poor Morris Feldstein.
You don't have to follow politics to love this book, but if you do you will love it even more.
I received this book that day that I heard an NPR story about it. It was written by sitting Congressman Steve Israel on his smartphone, and much of it is inspired by true events (government alarmed by elderly Quakers!). It is the best sort of satire, that pokes fun at every side (but, fortunately for me, mainly at the Bush administration). It is smart, hilarious, and hard to put down.
I read a review that said you will literally laugh out loud, which I took with a grain of salt. How often does one actually laugh anymore? Well, it was true. This book truly did make me laugh in the final chase sequence when all of the tension and drama leads to one hilarious statement by poor Morris Feldstein.
You don't have to follow politics to love this book, but if you do you will love it even more.
April 15, 2016
2.5 stars
Morris is an extremely average guy - wife & 2 kids, stable middle-of-the-road job, and a firm policy against making waves. so naturally, in the height of the Bush-era patriot act freak-out, he becomes a high value terrorist suspect.
this keystone kops version of g-men alphabet soup had potential to be an incisive satire, but 'Morris' feels more than a little like a vanity project. the author is a senator, so presumably his name and "insider info" got this little smidge of winking humor to sail on through a slush pile to publication. even though i agree with this sort of politics (e.g., Cheney was in fact the evil overlord of the Bush administration), it suffers from being a few clever moments sandwiched in a blandness of plot (kinda hard to get excited about a character whose defining trait is inertia).
Morris is an extremely average guy - wife & 2 kids, stable middle-of-the-road job, and a firm policy against making waves. so naturally, in the height of the Bush-era patriot act freak-out, he becomes a high value terrorist suspect.
this keystone kops version of g-men alphabet soup had potential to be an incisive satire, but 'Morris' feels more than a little like a vanity project. the author is a senator, so presumably his name and "insider info" got this little smidge of winking humor to sail on through a slush pile to publication. even though i agree with this sort of politics (e.g., Cheney was in fact the evil overlord of the Bush administration), it suffers from being a few clever moments sandwiched in a blandness of plot (kinda hard to get excited about a character whose defining trait is inertia).
February 16, 2016
I received a copy of this book through a Goodreads giveaway.
I really enjoyed The Global War on Morris. I was surprised to see such an engaging piece of fiction come from a politician. While the characters aren't terribly nuanced, they are likable. I enjoyed reading the fall and recovery of Morris and Rona's marriage as much as I enjoyed the unlikely friendship forged between Rona and a sleeper cell terrorist.
I don't read enough satire to really criticize this book, but I can say that it was a fast-paced, fun read that made me laugh out loud in a few places. Steve Israel did a great job at poking fun at my favorite government inefficiencies, including overstuffed offices and hot-headed law enforcement agents. The different plot points converge a bit too neatly, but that's part of the fun. Overall, I'd recommend it to a friend.
I really enjoyed The Global War on Morris. I was surprised to see such an engaging piece of fiction come from a politician. While the characters aren't terribly nuanced, they are likable. I enjoyed reading the fall and recovery of Morris and Rona's marriage as much as I enjoyed the unlikely friendship forged between Rona and a sleeper cell terrorist.
I don't read enough satire to really criticize this book, but I can say that it was a fast-paced, fun read that made me laugh out loud in a few places. Steve Israel did a great job at poking fun at my favorite government inefficiencies, including overstuffed offices and hot-headed law enforcement agents. The different plot points converge a bit too neatly, but that's part of the fun. Overall, I'd recommend it to a friend.
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