John Reed (October 22, 1887 – October 17, 1920) was a journalist and social activist best known for Ten Days That Shook the World, his first-hand account of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. He was born to a well-to-do family in Portland, Oregon and was educated at private schools. After graduating from Harvard his friend journalist Lincoln Steffens introduced him to the magazine publishing world in New York, where he began to publish regularly and nurtured a passion for social justice. He covered the Mexican Revolution in 1913, embedding with the Villistas and producing a series of noted articles that were published in 1914 as Insurgent Mexico.  He covered World War I throughout Russia and Eastern Europe, publishing The War in Eastern Europe in 1916. He married Louise Bryant upon returning home and lost a kidney to surgery, which saved him from involvement in a war he opposed strenuously. The couple journeyed to Petrograd just in time for the Bolshevik Revolution, which Reed supported enthusiastically. He became close with the inner circle and worked for the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, translating documents into English.  After difficulties returning home, he published Ten Days That Shook the World in 1919. His outspoken defense of the Bolsheviks led to several indictments for sedition in America that forced him to flee to Russia, where he died of spotted typhus in 1920. He was given a hero’s funeral and buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, one of three Americans accorded that singular honor.