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 & the Bolsheviks finally seized power Containing verbatim reports both of speeches by leaders & the chance comments of bystanders set against an idealized backcloth of the proletariat soldiers sailors & peasants uniting to throw off oppression Reed's account is the product of passionate involvement & remains an unsurpassed classic of reporting