John Reed

Biography

John Reed (1887–1920) was an American journalist, poet, and activist best known for Ten Days That Shook the World, his eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Born in Portland, Oregon, to a wealthy family, Reed was educated at Harvard, where he became involved in radical politics and literary circles. He worked as a journalist covering labor strikes, the Mexican Revolution, and World War I before traveling to Russia in 1917, where he witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution firsthand. His vivid, sympathetic account of the revolution was praised by Lenin himself and became one of the most widely read works of political journalism in history. Reed helped found the Communist Labor Party of America and returned to Russia, where he died of typhus at age thirty-two and was buried at the Kremlin Wall. His life inspired the 1981 film Reds, starring Warren Beatty. Reed’s journalism combined literary talent with passionate political commitment, creating some of the most vivid reporting of the early twentieth century.