Ten Days That Shook the World

Written by John Reed, the man whose life inspired the movie Reds, this is a classic modern history book, ideal for anyone who, like me, had a passion for the Russian Revolution when studying it in Modern History. 

Historical journalist, John Reed was actually in Russia when the Revolution of the Bolsheviks took place in 1917. In the pages of this book, he describes the phases of the revolution as he personally saw them happen. 

This will probably be a shorter review given the fact that I read this book about five years ago, when I was studying the Russian Revolution in high school and discovered that my Dad actually had this book in his library. I remember, at that time, it took me quite a while to get through it because, although the subject matter was really interesting to me, I found the overall read rather dry and difficult to persevere through. I suppose that’s the case with most history books, you need to completely in love with the subject about which you’re reading or else you’ll put the book down and never get back onto finishing it. In the case of Ten Days That Shook the World, it really does read like a history book. Although the events are interesting, the entire thing is merely over 200 pages of facts with the occasional personal anecdote of the writer thrown in, in the hopes that it might bring some sort of breath of fresh air to the dry and almost spiritless pages of the book. 

All this probably will sound bias because, I’m going to be completely honest here, I’m writing from memory. I did start re-reading the book after finishing Hollywood Babylon II, but I just found that I really could not bring myself to the read the book a second time. After finishing it the first time, I’ve always said to people “if I can make my way through John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook the World, then I can read anything.” And that’s really how I still feel on the matter. I appreciate the work that Reed did and I recognise that this piece is a work of historical significance, my Modern History teacher always used to drop its name during lessons, but ultimately I could not bring myself to read it a second time. Once was quite enough. 

Filled with politics, violence, action, historical figures, plenty of drama, and personal experiences, Ten Days That Shook the World is a fine read for those who find the subject matter really interesting, but ultimately I do feel that it’s a book you only need to read once. That’s not to say that I didn’t like it though.