An anthology of Mike Marqusee's selected articles discussing Bob Dylan, the game of cricket, American Civil rights, Jewish identity, William Blake’s art, nationalism, Big Pharma, Labour Party politics, the films of John Ford, Flamenco music, the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, the BDS campaign, Muhammad Ali and Italian Renaissance painting amongst many other topics explored with Marqusee's acute, erude and kaleidoscopic writings.
May 28, 2005
The Guardian, 28 May Review of Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads by Greil Marcus On the eve of its 40th birthday, “Like a Rolling Stone”, Bob Dylan’s splendidly splenetic six-minute rock’n’roll hit, sounds fresher than any number of more recent chart successes. Tantalisingly mysterious yet brutally plain spoken, mean-spirited and deeply… Read more
Feb 4, 2005
Two poems published in Magma, February 2005 Friend at large Alan swings his bat-detector in self-defence. On their toes, humans creep in the penumbra cast by a lantern perched on his skull. Its beam rises over the Lea Valley like a klieg light, catching wildlife in its glare, setting creatures free – to hover on… Read more
Feb 1, 2005
The Guardian, February 2005 ‘Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie’ by Ed Cray, Norton, £18.99 Review by Mike Marqusee Had Woody Guthrie not been cremated, his spirit surely would have erupted from the grave in the early hours of 3rd November, as Republicans celebrating Bush’s re-election in Washington bellowed out his anthem,… Read more
Nov 25, 2004
The Nation, 13 December Review: Washington Gone Crazy: Senator Pat McCarran and the Great American Communist Hunt by Michael J Ybarra; Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth Century America by Ted Morgan; Treasonable Doubt: The Harry Dexter White Spy Case by R. Bruce Craig; Alger Hiss’s Looking Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy by… Read more
Nov 1, 2004
Red Pepper, November 2004 From movie theatres to music arenas, popular culture is proving a major battleground in the presidential election. Bruce Springsteen, the Dixie Chicks and Pearl Jam have been touring the swing states and ‘rockin’ the vote’. The gigs are packed but there’s a debate about just what effect any of it has…. Read more
Oct 27, 2004
As the world focuses on the US presidential election, Americans focus on the World Series, the best-of-seven game competition to determine the champions of Major League Baseball. To European ears it’s always smacked of arrogance. How can a “world series” be contested among teams entirely drawn from one country – the USA (plus Montreal and… Read more
Oct 16, 2004
The Guardian, 16 October Mike Marqusee reviews Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan “I went though it from cover to cover like a hurricane. Totally focussed on every word, and the book sang out to me like the radio.” Thus Bob Dylan, forty five years after the event, recalls a formative moment in modern popular… Read more
Oct 7, 2004
The Week (Cochin), 5 October (BCCI 75th anniversary special issue) In India I saw cricket stripped of its English accoutrements, the pretensions and prejudices the game had acquired in its native land, and played and watched in a different vein. I saw cricket installed at the heart of a burgeoning popular culture, subjected to all… Read more
Oct 1, 2004
The Hindu, 1 October Future historians of the game may come to regard the early years of the 21st century as a golden age for Test cricket, an era resplendent with competitive, dramatic encounters, fired by aggressive batting and captaincy, and graced with a duel for global supremacy between two unique slow bowlers. But many… Read more
