About
John Reed, born in Portland, Oregon, in 1887, was an American journalist and writer. After graduating from Harvard in 1910, he moved to Greenwich Village and joined the socialist magazine The Masses. He covered the Mexican Revolution alongside Pancho Villa (Insurgent Mexico, 1914) and later World War I in Eastern Europe. His firsthand account of the Bolshevik Revolution, Ten Days That Shook the World (1919), made him famous. A co-founder of the Communist Labor Party of America in 1919, he died of typhus in Moscow in 1920 and was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
* 1887-10-22 — † 1920-10-17
Major works
- Insurgent Mexico (1914)reportage
- The War in Eastern Europe (1916)reportage
- Ten Days That Shook the World (1919)historical account
Key milestones
- 1910Graduated from Harvard, where he served on the editorial boards of the Harvard Monthly and the Lampoon.
- 1919Co-founded the Communist Labor Party of America and became its leader.
- 1920Died of typhus in Moscow; buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
Themes
RevolutionWar journalismSocialismPolitical activismHistorical eyewitness
Sources: oregonencyclopedia.org · poetryfoundation.org · hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu