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.
Jul 2, 2002
Socialist Review, July 2002 We are being told that we can breathe a sigh of relief. India and Pakistan, it seems, have stepped back from the brink of the worst human catastrophe since the Second World War. As so often in the past, people around the planet are being assured that they can ‘learn to… Read more
Jun 6, 2002
The Guardian, 6 June 2002 It may be hard to remember amid the World Cup clamour, but the beauty of football, like other games, lies in its sublime pointlessness. It is an end in itself with no higher purpose. The paradox is that precisely because it is utterly trivial, sport becomes saturated with meanings. Tomorrow’s… Read more
May 24, 2002
The British Library’s new exhibition on the East India Company does not tell the whole story The Guardian, 24 May 2002 According to the British Library, its new exhibition on the East India Company shows “how the work of 11 men, from a cold, wet and then relatively poor country, paved the way for what… Read more
Feb 28, 2002
Tribune, 28 February 2002 On 19 February, the Pentagon Central Command confirmed that it has launched missile strikes in Afghanistan on “enemy forces” who are neither Al Qaeda nor Taliban, but are apparently hostile to the interim regime of Hamid Karzai. Asked by reporters in Delhi about the progress of the war in Afghanistan, General… Read more
Feb 9, 2002
Mike Marqusee cheers Dancing Shoes Is Dead: A Tale of Fighting Men in South Africa by Gavin Evans, a hard-hitting memoir of South African boxing The Guardian, 9 February 2002 Ever since the ringside cry of “Don’t let the nigger win!” went up at the epic 1810 bout between the black American ex-slave Molineux and… Read more
Feb 4, 2002
America’s attempt to use Muhammad Ali to sell its policies to Muslim countries will not work The Guardian, 4 February 2002 When Hollywood bosses were asked by the Bush administration to do their bit in the “war on terrorism”, they readily signed up for the new crusade. In particular, they promised to “stress efforts to… Read more
Jan 6, 2002
By Charles Shaar Murray and Mike Marqusee Independent on Sunday, January 6 2002 When is Star Trek not Star Trek? When it’s Enterprise. The latest instalment of television’s 35-year-old science-fiction flagship – which begins tomorrow on Sky 1 – cannily hedges its bets by omitting the words “Star Trek” from its title, but that’s not… Read more
Jan 1, 2002
From Beyond September 11: An Anthology of Dissent (Pluto Press). I was visiting New York when the news of the massacre of 15 Christians in Bahawalpur flashed up on CNN. It was a brief item, included in an update on the war, and all that the casual viewer would know was that ‘Islamic fundamentalists’ had… Read more
Dec 21, 2001
The Guardian, December 21, 2001 If any of the England cricketers currently struggling with the spin bowlers in Bangalore have had a chance to see Lagaan, the Bollywood crossover hit about a Raj-era grudge match between heroic Gujerati villagers and dastardly Anglo-imperialists, they’ll know that they are merely bit players in a long-running national psychodrama…. Read more
Dec 1, 2001
BBC History Magazine, December 2001 Asked if ‘Ali’, the soon-to-be released Hollywood epic starring Will Smith, would be ‘controversial’, screenwriter Eric Roth responded, “Are you kidding? It’s about Muhammad Ali. Do you really think all the things he stood for don’t matter anymore? His name is still a lightning rod in American society.” Roth has… Read more
