John Reed conveys, with the immediacy of cinema, the impression of a whole nation in ferment and disintegration. A contemporary journalist writing in the first flush of revolutionary enthusiasm, he gives us a record of the events in Petrograd in November 1917, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks finally siezed power. Containing verbatim reports both of speeches by leaders and the chance comments of bystanders set against an idealized backcloth of the proletariat soldiers, sailors, and peasants uniting to throw off oppression, Reed's account is the product of passionate involvement.
Skim through the play-by-play of party meetings for lovely, vivid writing about the first snowfall in Moscow that year, driving at night during a revolution, conversations with soldiers and a the vegetarian restaurant "I Eat Nobody" with Trotsky's picture on the walls.
