John Reed was born in Portland, Oregon in 1887. After college he entered journalism and soon became the most highly paid ace reporter in the United States of America. He was a correspondent in the Mexican war of 1916 to 17 and a reporter in the First World War, a job which took him to Russia- he was in Petrograd in 1917. He became personally involved in the Labour movement in the United States of America in 1913 when he helped organise a silk-workers' strike in Paterson, New jersey; and when he returned from Russia he toured the country speaking on the October Revolution and reporting for the Liberator.
In 1919 he chaired the meeting which founded the Communist-Labour party, later the CPUSA.
John Reed then returned to the Russian Soviet Federative socialist Republic, where he died of typhus in 1920. he was buried in the Red Square, in the Heroes' Grave; a plaque in the [[Kremlin Wall]] commemorates him.
His most notable work is ten days that shook the world which documents his first hand experiences with the October Revolution.