John Reed’s Ten Days that Shook the World is one of the first book-length, eyewitness accounts of the incredible events of the 1917 Russian Revolution. John Reed, active in the left wing of the Socialist Party of America, traveled to the Russia and witnessed soviet meetings, Lenin's speeches, and the October Revolution firsthand. Ten Days That Shook The World is a vivid account of what a revolution looks like. 

As Lenin wrote in his introduction to the book in 1919: "Unreservedly do I recommend it to the workers of the world. Here is a book which I should like to see published in millions of copies and translated into all languages. It gives a truthful and most vivid exposition of the events so significant to the comprehension of what really is the Proletarian Revolution and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. These problems are widely discussed, but before one can accept or reject these ideas, he must understand the full significance of his decision."