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Definable Traces in the Atmosphere
This rich selection of Mike Marqusee’s writing captures the kaleidoscopic mind of a polymath who delighted in deploying one sphere of knowledge to provide exhilarating insight into others. These pages illuminate the connections and contrasts between William Blake and Thomas Paine, Bob Dylan and Muhammad Ali, cricket and the nation state, Jewish identity and the BDS campaign, flamenco music and the films of John Ford, and the vagaries of political activism, often working closely with those who, subsequent to Mike’s untimely death in 2015, went on to lead the Labour Party. The extraordinary profusion of Mike’s interests was rooted deep in the soil of principles: a lifelong commitment to ...
Redemption Song
When Muhammad Ali died, many mourned the life of the greatest sportsman the world had ever seen. In Redemption Song, Mike Marqusee argues that Ali was not just a boxer but a remarkable political figure in a decade of tumultuous change. Playful, popular, always confrontational, Ali refashioned the role of a political activist and was central, alongside figures such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, to the black liberation and the anti-war movements. Marqusee shows that sport and politics were always intertwined, and this is the reason why Ali remained an international beacon of hope, long after he had left the ring.
If I Am Not for Myself
If I Am Not For Myself is a passionate, thought-provoking exploration of what it means to be Jewish in the twenty-first century. It traces the author's upbringing in 1960s Jewish-American suburbia, his anti-war and pro-Palestinian activism on the British left, and life as a Jew among Muslims in Pakistan, Morocco, and Britain. Interwoven with this are the experiences of his grandfather's life in Jewish New York of the 1930s and 40s, his struggles with anti-Semitism and the twists and turns that led him from anti-fascism to militant Zionism. In the course of this deeply personal story, Marqusee refutes the claims of Israel and Zionism on Jewish loyalty and laments their impact on the Jewish diaspora. Rather, he argues for a richer, more multi-dimensional understanding of Jewish history and identity, and reclaims vital political and personal space for those castigated as "self-haters" by the Jewish establishment.
Slow Turn
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The Price of Experience
Writer and political activist Mike Marqusee was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, in the summer of 2007. At first, disinclined to share his misery with others, he was reluctant to write about his illness. But he then came to realize that doing so provided a precious continuity with his life as a writer before contracting the disease, and a way of reaching out to a wider world that the illness made physically less accessible. Writing allowed him to address what he saw as a variety of insidious platitudes that surround cancer, often connected to the individualistic idea that the sufferer must be brave in battling the disease, with the inevitable corollary that those who ...
Anyone but England
Anyone But England is a detailed exploration into the origins of cricket; the romance, cultural identity, hypocrisy, flaws of governance and glory of the game. Mike Marqusee, an American who fell in love with cricket when he moved to the UK in the 1970s, looks at the history of elitism and empire, and how race and class have always been issues in the game. Scrutinising the long saga of South Africa's exclusion from world cricket, Marqusee charts England's collusion with apartheid, and also details an eye-opening account of Pakistan's controversial 'ball-tampering' tour of England, which provoked intense debate amongst cricket fans about the role of both the media and racism in the modern game. Showing that supporting the game does not mean you need be blind to its flaws, Marqusee's passion and enthusiasm for cricket is threaded through every element of Anyone But England. Winner of the Aberdare Literary Prize, awarded by the British Society of Sports History, 1994 Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, 1994
Wicked Messenger
Bob Dylan’s abrupt abandonment of overtly political songwriting in the mid-1960s caused an uproar among critics and fans. In Wicked Messenger, acclaimed cultural-political commentator Mike Marqusee advances the new thesis that Dylan did not drop politics from his songs but changed the manner of his critique to address the changing political and cultural climate and, more importantly, his own evolving aesthetic. Wicked Messenger is also a riveting political history of the United States in the 1960s. Tracing the development of the decade’s political and cultural dissent movements, Marqusee shows how their twists and turns were anticipated in the poetic aesthetic—anarchic, unaccountable, contradictory, punk— of Dylan's mid-sixties albums, as well as in his recent artistic ventures in Chronicles, Vol. I and Masked and Anonymous. Dylan’s anguished, self-obsessed, prickly artistic evolution, Marqusee asserts, was a deeply creative response to a deeply disturbing situation. "He can no longer tell the story straight," Marqusee concludes, "because any story told straight is a false one."
Anyone But England
Anyone But England is a timely and entertaining exploration of the bonds which the English cricket to the English nation as both face apparently inexorable decline. Mike Marqusee, an American who has lived in England for twenty years, turns the amused gaze of an outsider on to the idiosyncrasies of the English at play, delving into the interminable wrangles over coloured clothing, covered pitches and commercial sponsorship. Yet Marqusee also displays the knowledgeability and passion of a dedicated cricket follower who has watched matches on four continents. His elegant and concise accounts of the origins of the game, its romance with the British Empire, and its traumatic adjustment to the mo...
Anyone But England
Mike Marqusee is that exceedingly rare animal: an American who likes cricket - indeed, is obsessed with it, like all true devotees of the game. But coming from a country which didn't invent the game, didn't have an empire and doesn't expect by divine right to be the best in the world at it, gives his perspective on the English game a real originality. Anyone But England stands alongside Beyond a Boundary and Derek Birley's classics, A Social History of English Cricket and The Willow Wand (both published by Aurum) as one of the few indispensable anatomies of the game. It looks at such controversial - even unpalatable - aspects of cricket as racism, fair play and cheating, the place of tradition, the power of the blue-blazered establishment, and why for so long the England team were so bad. On first publication by Verso Marquesee's book attracted an enormous amount of coverage and was condemned by as many died-in-the-wool cricket commentators as it was praised for its freshness and iconoclasm by the more progressively-minded. This new edition includes a new chapter bringing his portrait of the game up to date.
Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
Using original research from archives, interviews with MPs and party officials, and first hand testimonies from grass roots activists, the authors go behind the scenes to name names, record the votes, and lay bare the machinations of those who led the Labour Party to electoral defeat in 1992.
