Mike marqusee biography

Ten years ago today, just before reaching his sixty-second birthday, Mike Marqusee died after a long struggle with cancer. Marqusee, who was born in the United States but made his home in London, was one of the finest socialist writers of his time in the English (or perhaps any) language.

His books and articles covered a huge variety of subjects, but two of his main concerns stand out and have only gained in significance over the last decade: the politics of mass culture under capitalism, especially sports, and the relationship between Israel, Zionism, and Jewish identity.

Before going into more detail about his body of work, it’s worth taking a moment to consider what type of writer Marqusee was, and why he stood out among his contemporaries. In his essay “Renewals,” published at the start of the new century, Perry Anderson discussed the impact of academic culture on the anglophone left:

A major change of the past epoch, often remarked upon, has been the widespread migration of intellectuals of the Left into instituti

•

Mike Marqusee 1953-2015

Obituaries

This article is over 10 years, 0 months old

By Brian Richardson

Downloading PDF. Please wait...

Tuesday 20 January 2015

Issue 2437

Socialists will be saddened to learn of the death of the writer and activist Mike Marqusee at just 61.

Born in New York, Mike moved to Britain in 1971. He threw himself into the labour movement. He was a committed trade unionist, Labour Party member, editor of Labour Briefing and contributor to Red Pepper.

He was passionately anti-imperialist and after leaving the Labour Party played an important role in launching the Stop the War Coalition in the early 2000s.

He was also that rare thing—an American who understood cricket and loved the game.  

Much as he enjoyed it, he hated its elitism. He sought to challenge it by launching the Hit Racism for Six campaign in 1995. This took its cue from the Kick Racism Out of Football initiative.

It was a pleasure to share a platform with Mike when he published Anyone But England, his take on the history of cricket, and Redemption Song, his brilliant biography of the g

•

Mike Marqusee

American writer, journalist, and political activist (1953–2015)

Mike Marqusee (;^[1] 27 January 1953 – 13 January 2015^[2]) was an American writer, journalist, and political activist in London.

Life and career

"Both in the eloquence of his writing and the deep humanism of his vision, Mike Marqusee stands shoulder to shoulder with the spirits of Isaac Deutscher and Edward Said."

—Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz

Marqusee's first published work was the essay "Turn Left at Scarsdale", written when he was a sixteen-year-old high school student in New York and included in the 1970 collection "High School Revolutionaries".^[3] Marqusee, who described himself as a "deracinated New York Marxist Jew", lived in Britain from 1971. He wrote mainly about politics, popular culture, the Indian sub-continent and cricket, and was a regular correspondent for, among others, The Guardian, Red Pepper, and The Hindu. After he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2007, he wrote extensively on health issues, and in defence o