Alexander Cockburn (1941-2012)

A voice that will be missed.

Alexander Cockburn, a sharp-witted journalist and unapolo­getic provocateur of the left who brought a hard-nosed intensity to his political columns in the Nation, the Village Voice and other outlets, died July 21 at a medical clinic near Frankfurt, Germany. He was 71.

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In 1987, writer David Rieff reviewed Mr. Cockburn’s book “Corruptions of Empire: Life Studies and the Reagan Era” in the Times Literary Supplement, calling it “a mass of bile and invective, some of it tremendously funny and some of it monumentally ill-judged...The American political scene is immensely enlivened, and I think improved, by his presence in it.”

Godspeed, Alex.