Robert A. Rosenstone

In the late 1970's my wife dragged me to see the movie "Reds". Although the movie didn't impress me, it did make me curious about John Reed. Many years before, I had heard of his best known work, "Ten Days That Shook the World", his name didn't ring a bell. But I did buy this book when it appeared in one of the many catalogs I was receiving at the time. I finally read it this year (2012).

The edition I got (Vantage Books, 1981) was supposedly a trade paperback, but the quality was down with the worst of mass market paperbacks. The pages were glued at the spine ("perfect" binding) and the glue disintegrated as I read the book, so by the time I finished most of the pages had fallen out. Also, it was printed on high-acid paper, which had turned brown by this time.

Rosenstone gives a comprehensive and apparently accurate account of Reed's life from his birth in Portland, Oregon (1887) to his death in Moscow, Russia (1920) of typhus.

In between, Reed made his living primarily as a journalist. Apparently from his days as a Harvard student, he was a Socialist, social activist, and labor activist. His journalistic assignments included the Mexican revolution, World War I, the labor movement (primarily in the United States), and the Russian Revolution.

Rosenstone's writing is generally clear, straightforward, and pedestrian. As I progressed through the book, I found my interest declining, until I was impatient to just get the thing finished. The production defects mentioned above probably contributed to the decline.

In sum, "Romantic Revolutionary) is worthwhile for one seriously interested in Reed's life. The reader with little or casual interest should pass.… (meer)