The rationale underpinning, and a detailed blow-by-blow account of, the 10 days. Ty’s review covers it for me - I commend it to you

Sometimes being a true believer gets you into rooms as a reporter you never could otherwise. As a work of narrative non(ish)-fiction, wonderful.

I just finished this one, after meaning to check it out since college.

Sometimes you know a book is great even if you yourself have a hard time reading it. That was the case for me in the very well written and detailed personal account of the October Revolution in Russia, as experienced by American reporter and Communist sympathizer, Jack Reed.

The excellent movie Reds is based in large part on the accounts in this book. (Warren Beauty producing, directing, writing, and starring as the author, Reed.) I love that film, and assumed I would love the book. I certainly admire the book, and can see why a movie was made of it; Reed's descriptions of moods, sights, sounds and smells, his overall description of environment is immpeccable. The reader feels as if they are right there with Reed as he surveys the war front, walks dark streets, and experiences the unspecified yet palpable unrest that was so pervasive in all parts of Russia during that historical time. I loved these parts of the book.

But the book is just as much, if not more, Reed's account of the literally scores of factions, political parties, armies, navies, congresses, and commititees. Man alive, were there committees in revolutionary Russia! Hundreds! Everywhere! Even in the Army. There was even a Commitee of Commitees, and a Union of Unions.

So horribly complex were the struggles of these inummerable political/governmental groups that one could very easily get lost trying to remember who was who, and who was against what, etc. There is a brief description at the front of the book for each of the parties, but flipping back and forth grew tedious, so I gave up. A reference card as one reads is required for most people not well versed already in Russian history of the early 20th century. While I am sure Reed breaks it down better than most, the chunks are still hard for a novice to swallow sometimes.

He is also a victim of his meticulous collecting, whole pages sometimes being dedicated to verbatim accounts of speeches and articles and pamphlets set out all over Russia. Makes one's head spin.

Yet even then, I admired the passion with which he wrote those part of the accounts. Not exactly as moving or intriguing as the mood pieces spread throughout the pages, Reed certainly leaves no stone unturned. Unfortunatley, one has to be a geologist to keep some of them straight.

I will, in all liklihood, read the book again one day, when more of it has time to process. For though Reed himself confessed that he failed to be 100% objective, his first hand account of one of the most important social shifts in world history is invaluable to historians. And his prose, (and even some poetry) is a very rich feast for any wordsmith, such as myself.

A book to be admired and remembered, even when confusing. Not for everyone, and sometimes, not for me. But when it did hit with me, I was quite glad to have finally, after about eight years, picked it up and read it.

What an interesting book, though not the most engrossing read... John Reed intersperses absolutely endless accounts of meetings, speeches, votes, and policy announcements with the true gems: first-hand anecdotes about what it was like on the streets of Petersburg/Petrograd during the Bolshevik Revolution of Oct-Nov 1917. Reed is not exactly unbiased, in fact he is fervently biased on the part of the Bolsheviks, and as a result his reportage is occasionally pretty loose with the facts. This is fairly understandable given the total chaos going on around him. It helped that the edition I read had excellent clarifications and corrections from editor Bertram D. Wolfe (1960). This book is most useful not as a dispassionate journalistic account but as a lively, breathless telling of what could be seen at street level. Reed is at his best when simply recounting a situation as it unfolded before his eyes, and the scenes he was witness to were pretty astonishing. The general impression is of almost unimaginable confusion and disorganization, endless raucous committee meetings, soldiers roaming around looking for a front that didn't exist, wild rumours and political debates on every street corner. I had no idea there were so many political factions at play, it was a real free-for-all. In all of the frantic activity of those days, and Reed mentions dozens of major actors, it was a little chilling to come across one name only briefly, not at all a key figure at the time, listed as the newly appointed Chairman for Nationalities: "I. V. Dugashvili (Stalin)". Aided by special passes accorded him as an American comrade with Socialist credentials, Reed wanders all over the city as well as venturing into the countryside as hostilities commence. He even manages to get into the Winter Palace before the Red Army does, wandering around and witnessing the besieged Provisional Government and the famous women's battalion defending the place. These are the moments that I enjoyed the most in this book and I feel like I came away with a real sense of the reality and chaos of that moment in history. All the committee hearings though, are a hard slog! This book is probably for history enthusiasts only...