Ten Days That Shook the World is John Reed's eyewitness account of the
Russian Revolution. A contemporary journalist writing in the first flush
of revolutionary enthusiasm, he gives a gripping record of the events in
Petrograd in November 1917, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks finally seized
power. Containing verbatim reports both of speeches by leaders and the
chance comments of bystanders, set against an idealized backcloth of the
proletariat, soldiers, sailors, and peasants uniting to throw off
oppression, Reed's account is the product of passionate involvement and
remains an unsurpassed classic of reporting.