John Reed Add a review

John Silas Reed (October 22, 1887 – October 17, 1920) was an American journalist, poet, and communist activist. Reed first gained prominence as a war correspondent during the Mexican Revolution for Metropolitan and World War I for The Masses. He is best known for his coverage of the October Revolution in Petrograd, Russia, which he wrote about in his 1919 book Ten Days That Shook the World.

Reed supported the Soviet takeover of Russia, even briefly taking up arms to join the Red Guards in 1918. He hoped for a similar communist revolution in the United States, and co-founded the short-lived Communist Labor Party of America in 1919. He died in Moscow of spotted typhus in 1920. At the time of his death, he may have soured on the Soviet leadership, but he was given a hero's burial by the Soviet Union and is one of only four Americans buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.