In this book John Reed conveys, with the immediacy of cinema, the impression of a whole nation in ferment and disintegration. 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 prolitariat, soldiers, sailors, and peasants uniting to throw off oppression, Reed's account is the product of passioante involvement and remains an unsurpassed classic of reporting.
