John Reed : witness to revolution / by Tamara Hovey.

Includes index, photocredits, and list of books by John Reed.

There is no table of contents.

"A biography of the 'father of modern journalism' whose coverage of the turbulent events of his times earned him a world-wide reputation." - From title verso.

"John Reed - Harvard educated, from a privileged Portland, Oregon family - became in his mid-twenties the most daring and brilliant journalist of his day. 'John Reed' was not simply a byline; it was a man sentenced to twenty days in a filthy and overcrowded prison in Paterson, New Jersey for refusing to leave the vicinity of the factory where silk weavers were on strike. It was a man who, assigned to the Mexican War, was not satisfied to linger at the border with other reporters but who covered the war riding alongside Pancho Villa, seeing for himself what war was really like and setting it down as he saw it. In 1917 he went to the streets of Petrograd where he witnessed the greatest social drama of the century - the Russian Revolution. He brilliantly and poetically recorded his observations in Ten Days that Shook the World, which, almost at the instant of its appearance became a classic. John Reed died in Moscow at the age of thirty-three and until his death, he devoted his life to a losing battle for social reform." - From book jacket.