Born to a Hungarian-speaking Jewish middle class family in western Romania, Markovits grew up tri-lingually. He completed his secondary education in Austria's famed Theresianische Akademie and then proceeded to obtain five university degrees from Columbia University. Markovits has taught at some of the finest universities in the United States, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Israel; his research has been published in ten languages and ranges from sports to animals; from European anti-Americanism to European social democracy; from European anti-Semitism to the politics of the new social movements.

Among his many fellowships and awards, Markovits is proudest of his having been a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in 1998-1999; and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) of Stanford University in 2008-2009, two truly distinguished centers of international excellence and first-rate scholarship.

• Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America (Princeton University Press, 2007). This book was published by Einaudi in Italian in the fall of 2007 and by eelee in Korean in the fall of 2008.
• Amerika, dich hasst sich's besser. Antiamerikanismus und Antisemitismus in Europa (Hamburg: Konkret-Literatur-Verlag, 2004)
• Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism (Princeton UP, 2001). [with Steven L. Hellerman] 
• The German Predicament: Memory and Power in the New Europe (Cornell UP, 1997). [with Simon Reich; also available in German and Dutch translations]
• The German Left: Red, Green and Beyond (Oxford UP, 1993).   [with Philip S. Gorski; also available in German translation]
• From Bundesrepublik to Deutschland: German Politics after Unification (U of Michigan P, 1993). [co-edited with Michael Huelshoff and Simon Reich]
• The Politics of the West German Trade Unions: Strategies of Class and Interest Representation in Growth and Crisis (Cambridge UP, 1986).