The Eyewitness Travel series serves as a great visual introduction to a place. It allows you to "see" what places are like and plan your trip accordingly. The maps are usually great and the flaps of the book are constructed to serve as place markers. I bought this book after spending several months living in Prague after college. I had no money and didn't take many photos while I was there; I use this book to bring back memories. I now buy these books whenever there is one for my destination (I even have the one for my current home town).

I wouldn't recommend the book as the soul guide for a budget traveller or someone who wants more than a one-page history on things. Yes, buy the book to plan places and sites to visit, but consult another source for cheap eats/accommodations (there is a selection of these) or detailed historical information.

After years of traveling in Europe and buying countless books and maps on every country, city and tourist site, finally a series of books that gives you a little of everything, but is small enough to carry easily.

This Eyewitness Guide, like the others in this series, gives you a way to quickly identify areas of interest and gives you enough detail and colorful pictures, that country, city and site specific guide books are no longer necessary. The maps in the back are correct and easy to use with an amazing amount of detail. The opening and closing times are always correct. The restaurant and hotel recommendations are right on. The survival guide in the back gives you quick reference on everything from what the currency is to how to use the telephone.

On top of all of the contents, the book itself is tough enough to be thrown around in that backpack or shoved into your pocket without hurting it. The paper is of high quality with sharp graphics. The cover is tough and has built in page marks.

I travel to Europe several times a year and have tried every travel series there is. After using the Eyewitness Travel Guide, these along with the Rick Steves' series is all I ever use anymore.

The series of Eyewitness Travel Guides (particularly one on Prague) has been highly recommended by several travel sites. With my forthcoming trip to Prague this summer, I immediately got curious & ran to the nearest specialty bookstore right after office hours. I have to agree that this is the BEST guide book I have ever seen. Not only does it have maps or the tourist highlights, but it also contains a history of the place, background of the famous sites & LOVELY photos! It also has a primer on culture, etiquette & currency, a guide on getting around via public transport, a suggestion on restaurants & a limited selection on housing (you can find more of this in the Net or other travel guides). This book is as good as a real souvenir from the trip itself with all its lovely photos & background. I will definitely bring this book (together with the other series I bought for Vienna & Budapest)with me when I leave in August.

The Eyewitness Travel series serves as a great visual introduction to a place. It allows you to "see" what places are like and plan your trip accordingly. The maps are usually great and the flaps of the book are constructed to serve as place markers. I bought this book after spending several months living in Prague after college. I had no money and didn't take many photos while I was there; I use this book to bring back memories. I now buy these books whenever there is one for my destination (I even have the one for my current home town).

I wouldn't recommend the book as the soul guide for a budget traveller or someone who wants more than a one-page history on things. Yes, buy the book to plan places and sites to visit, but consult another source for cheap eats/accommodations (there is a selection of these) or detailed historical information.

After years of traveling in Europe and buying countless books and maps on every country, city and tourist site, finally a series of books that gives you a little of everything, but is small enough to carry easily.

This Eyewitness Guide, like the others in this series, gives you a way to quickly identify areas of interest and gives you enough detail and colorful pictures, that country, city and site specific guide books are no longer necessary. The maps in the back are correct and easy to use with an amazing amount of detail. The opening and closing times are always correct. The restaurant and hotel recommendations are right on. The survival guide in the back gives you quick reference on everything from what the currency is to how to use the telephone.

On top of all of the contents, the book itself is tough enough to be thrown around in that backpack or shoved into your pocket without hurting it. The paper is of high quality with sharp graphics. The cover is tough and has built in page marks.

I travel to Europe several times a year and have tried every travel series there is. After using the Eyewitness Travel Guide, these along with the Rick Steves' series is all I ever use anymore.

The series of Eyewitness Travel Guides (particularly one on Prague) has been highly recommended by several travel sites. With my forthcoming trip to Prague this summer, I immediately got curious & ran to the nearest specialty bookstore right after office hours. I have to agree that this is the BEST guide book I have ever seen. Not only does it have maps or the tourist highlights, but it also contains a history of the place, background of the famous sites & LOVELY photos! It also has a primer on culture, etiquette & currency, a guide on getting around via public transport, a suggestion on restaurants & a limited selection on housing (you can find more of this in the Net or other travel guides). This book is as good as a real souvenir from the trip itself with all its lovely photos & background. I will definitely bring this book (together with the other series I bought for Vienna & Budapest)with me when I leave in August.

Let me preface this by saying I have never read Nabokov, and am only familiar with him thru second-hand knowledge of his works: that is, until reading 'The Eye'. He has quite a following of pretentious college students, and now I can see why. This book is not that great, but supposedly this is not his best work, so it's to be expected. I found that it was empty and devoid of meaning, but written in such a way as to make you think there was some sort of meaning behind it. Nabokov just threw together some very 'deep' thoughts and had the protagonist use irony to appeal to the sardonic in all of his readers. I've seen this done much better in REAL detective novels such as Chandler's, for crying out loud! This is literary? Literary my eye! (pun intended)

Closer to four-and-a-half stars. Spectacular; for a novel that tips in at just over one-hundred pages, "The Eye" is a marvel of imagery and literary sleight-of-hand. Nabokov, one of the most deviously ingenious writers of the 20th century, offers this short, but striking insight into the protean nature of human identity. Through the character of Smurov--a suicide victim whose thoughts go on even after his death--Nabokov explores the psyche of Everyman, the manifold ways in which we perceive ourselves, and are perceived by others. Standing outside his body, the detached first-person narrator observes himself (Smurov) in his daily interactions with others and longs to learn more about himself by learning how others see him. But even beyond its philosophical/existential implications, "The Eye" is simply great fun to read. Nabokov's writing, even in translation, is beautiful and his deft manipulation of character is unparalleled. It is unlikely that you will find another novel that delivers as much bang for the literary buck.

This is the best novel of Nabokov's I've read since Lolita. Though not as fine a work as that great novel by far you can see in the main character Smurov echoes of the later protagonist. What is more, being such a short book it is not too great an investment of your time.

Where else but between the pages of Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading could one find a story so well written and so exceptionally powerful that you beg for more. The story follows a lonely isolated man who responds to the name of Cinncinatus. He is charged for a crime rarely described and sentenced to death for it. And what more is reason does not exist in this world, it's inhabbited by irrasional, and rather frustrating characters. The characters are odd, granted, but they are described with such passion, and such enthusiasm that they truly come alive. This is an art I love about Nabokov (as well as the other Russian authors Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, etc). However there are some weak points to this story, One is the repitition of descriptions, and Two is the vague details of some events. I got confused at some points in the book (however I am only 17 and this is the first non short story I read by nabokov). All in all the book is fascinating, and a defenite read. -sorry for the spelling errors-

It's almost impossible to give Nabokov anything LESS than five stars. He has become such a giant in the world of literature, that one ceases to be able to compare his work to other authors, and instead begins to hold them up against Nabokov's other works.

To validate the statements of so many below, "Invitation to a Beheading" is probably not good intro-Nabokov. Some will find the familiarity of his other works more palatable. As well, it may be unwise to tackle this text without a general knowledge of Eastern European politics.

The text is somewhat muddled in places, and I had a hard time deciding whose fault this was...the author's or the editor's. Some sentences were malingering, unclear, and broke up the natural flow of Nabokov's text, which usually reads easily. In the end, I chose sloppy editing and read on.

This text is HIGHLY introspective and symbolic, and I found myself actually applying pen-and-paper to the symbols I encountered, trying to sort out what Nabokov was saying. So saying, this book ended up being more academic reading than pleasure reading, but has nevertheless taken up quick residence on my favorite bookshelf.

It's virtually impossible not to give Nabokov five stars...

Anyhow, Invitation to a Beheading is certainly a tricky book, but Nabokov's work always is. I don't see how it's harder than Lolita (in fact I think Lolita is harder to understand than this book), despite what people read as rampant symbolism.

Now, I'm not a Nabokov scholar, but I've read enough from him about writing to say that I doubt he spent huge amounts of time coming up with symbolic imagery for Invitation to a Beheading...that just wouldn't be his style. Instead, I'd bet that he wrote what he saw in his mind's eye and leaves it to the reader to apply meaning to what's shown...much as Cincinnatus is left to apply meaning to his existence without outside help.

What the theme of this book is isn't entirely clear, although of course the final scene in which Cincinnatus thinks his captors out of existence is a pretty obvious clue to it; I read it as a work about A) the arbitrary nature of assigned meaning and B) the individual's overarching authority over his own reality. It's also worthwhile to note that I read Cincinnatus as being insane and that most of what happens in the book as being delusional (including the end). I don't know if that was Nabokov's intent, but it seems to me that there's an underlying framework of a story that would make rational sense in what we consider the real world, masked by what Cincinnatus sees and experiences.

The insanity theory might be a stretch and I'd go so far as to say it's rather unimportant as it has little to no effect on the theme. The challenge of this book is to read past what's going on and move beyond trying to make rational sense out of a clearly irrational book and find the theme. The world of Nabokov's invention cannot be reconciled with what most of us consider the real world: it's a waste of time to try to reconcile the two, and to do so would be to miss the point.

What is the point, then? Well, partly to confuse us and make us question what we think of as reality and partly to tell us that reality is of our own invention. The real genius of Nabokov lies in his ability to achieve both these goals in one word, so to speak; by totally disorienting his audience, Nabokov in fact makes his point of the arbitrary nature of reality and perception.

Sounds heady, I bet, but don't let that turn you away from this book. Despite its oddity, it's very readable and with a bit of sensitivity it's a clear window into Nabokov's archetypal (the archetypes are of his own invention, of course) style and his complete genius.

This is one of Nabokov's early works, but it's a very mature story--the prose is sparse, unnecessary detail is nonexistent and the story is maddeningly gripping. Nabokov follows (although not usually linearly) the young Russian chess prodigy, Luzhin, through his strange and obsessive rise to the top of the chess world, his marriage to a fascinating and caring woman, and his slow, maddeningly intricate and psychologically complex 'downfall' (though this isn't the right word). I recommend this book for at least three reasons: 1) It's short and gripping 2) Nabokov's prose is inspiring and 3) The story of poor Luzhin makes you feel as if you too are going mad (this is a good thing--you get to experience a plausible account of madness without--let's hope--going mad yourself). Enjoy!

Vladimir Nabokov presumably chose the English title for this novel because it describes an elaborate chess strategy, one which midway through the book fails its creator in tournament play, and in the end in the game of self-preservation. But it might just as well have been chosen to describe the central character's use of chess itself as a strategic defense against life. Luzhin, from childhood on, is never able to make a connection between himself and the world. His relationship to his parents' life in pre-revolutionary Russia is as abstract as that of an austistic genius' attachment to the complex theory of a computer game. Leaving Russia, such an emotional and nostalgic experience for Nabokov himself, disrupts Luzhin's psyche not a whit, for he has never invested any concrete part of himself in its memory. Indeed, Luzhin is so remote that the reader will often wonder what a concrete part of himself might look like in the first place. Discovering chess is the central event of his life, and losing it his central tragedy. There are some astonishing characters here: Luzhin's wife, who cannot hold onto her elusive husband any more than she might catch an ocean wave in her outstretched arms; his wife's parents, who have made Russia into a caricature of itself, trapped in a bowl of beet soup and served up to the strains of balalaikas; the sinister Valentinov, the real grandmaster of Luzhin's psyche, who moves his pawn on an immense emotional chessboard, the distant reaches of which even the novel itself would not seem to contain. "The Defense" is an exciting tour de force. It will stretch any reader's imagination into utterly uncharted territory. Nabokov's language is, as always, crisp and clear as a blue December morning. His worlds, spinning through the literary cosmos, are like nothing glimpsed through any telescope before.

The back cover of this book proclaims that it is "a chilling tale of obsession and madness." After I had finished the book, I thought this a laughable statement. There had been almost nothing frightening or chilling about it. A few seconds later, I stepped back and reevaluated what had actually happened in the book. A certain sentence in (I believe, though I could be wrong) the third-to-last paragraph hit me with a strong retroactive spook.

I consider that moment one of the finest moments of literary appreciation I have recently experienced. The reason it happened is that I had effectively become Luzhin. What he was thinking made perfect sense. The plot was in no way disturbing. Luzhin was perfectly reasonable under the circumstances. Except, of course, he wasn't. Nabokov leads the reader into Luzhin's head remarkably smoothly and successfilly.

This book was the first I read by Nabokov. Since I have not yet completed another, I can't say how it compares with his other books, but I can recommend it. One caveat: don't read Nabokov's introduction until after you finish the novel. there are a couple of reasons for this, which will become apparent when you do read it.

Vladimir Putin's "First Person" is a biography in question and answer format. It gives a great insight into the man who is the leader of the largest country in the world. There are questions and answers from not only Putin himself, but also his old school teachers, KGB collegues and his wife and two daughters. Even so, this biography does not give a 'full picture' of the president as a person and much of his past (for example KGB) is not mentioned in great detail (that's why I took off a star) and does not give a deep insight as the book implies. This aside, and all considered, this is a good read and a good introduction to Pres. Putin.

First Person is a transcription of a series of interviews conducted by three Russian journalists with Vladimir Putin, his wife and daughters, friends, teachers, and colleagues. The book is written in a question-answer format which is usually effective but occasionally leaves the reader in doubt as to who is answering a particular question: Putin or one of the other interviewees.

Don't read this book expecting deep insight into Putin's political philosophy or details of his experience in the KGB. With that said, First Person is a useful and interesting account of Putin's life, family, and experiences. An occasional bit of insight either slips or is inserted into the conversations. (It's hard to believe that someone as in-control as Putin would really let something slip. I don't mean to be suspicious or derogatory, I'm just recognizing that Putin is a successful politician who climbed one of the most difficult -and dangerous- ladders in the world.) One bit of possible insight is the fact that Putin was KGB station chief in Dresden, East Germany, at the time that the Berlin wall was pulled down. He shared a facility with the Stasi, his East German counterparts. When mobs approached the Stasi facility. Putin cabled Moscow for help and direction. He received neither and left active duty with the KGB soon after his (premature?) return from that assignment. I'm sure he was a bit disillusioned by this experience, but the degree and nature of the disillusionment is not developed. No surprise here; successful politicians don't intentionally walk into mine fields.

Overall, the book was an interesting and light read. Putin describes himself as a hooligan in his youth who mended his ways primarily to achieve his goal of going to law school in preparation for a career in the KGB. He chose that career path after seeing a movie entitled the Sword and the Shield (the KGB logo) which prompted him to walk uninvited into the local KGB office in Leningrad to seek employment. The officer who met him advised him that the KGB seldom considered walk-in applicants and that he should attend university and study law as a means of preparing himself. Rather amazingly, he did exactly that and was recruited immediately upon graduation.

The book also contains numerous details about Putin's early political life in the administration of Anatoly Sobchak, the reform-minded mayor of Leningrad, and his subsequent steady rise in the national government as well as numerous anecdotes from his family life.

Once upon a time, there was a belief in America that anyone could rise from the humblest of beginnings -- such as Abraham Lincoln, born in a cabin he built with his own hands -- to become President.

In Russia, without political opinion polls, focus groups or special interest funding, Vladimir Putin rose from a rat-infested cold water apartment to become President of his nation. This book is about a man who spent his professional life assessing people and situations, and thus is not afraid to make tough decisions. In Russia, for the immediate future, tough decisions are needed.

Putin's hero, Czar Peter the Great, used his regal power to make Russia a great, rich and powerful nation. Putin intends to provide similar dynamic leadership with democratic principles. An example may be Singapore, a mix of authority, discipline and prosperity.

The question-and-answer format of this book is based on six four-hour interviews by three journalists. Putin admits he was, ". . . a pure and utterly successful product of Soviet patriotic education." He was smart, dedicated, hard-working and very good in his chosen career with the KGB. He wasn't a old cloak-and-dagger "sneak and peek" spy; he spent his time reading reports, assessing East German officials and skillfully pushing paper.

Trained as a lawyer, he was appalled at how Communist officials assumed they were the law simply because they were Party members. Putin was never a dissident, he was the ultimate Organization Man whose goal was a richer, happier, stronger and freer Russia. He worked hard to become an insider, and as such saw the total incompetence of the Party.

His wife says, "He always lived for the sake of something. There are some people who work hard for money, but he works hard for ideas." When first married, they had a 10-foot by 12-foot room in his parents' 275-square foot apartment. Try and think of any American president since Lincoln -- another idea man -- who lived in any similar conditions.

Like Lincoln, whose greatest idea was "to preserve the Union," the prime challenge for Putin is to preserve Russia. His practical experience taught him that a free market economy is far superior to the chaos, conniving and cronyism of communism. He says the Soviets failed because they ". . . had a terminal disease without a cure -- a paralysis of power."

Two things are clear; Putin is not afraid to act, and he will never betray Russia. He learned from his father's World War II experience, ". . . there are always a lot of mistakes made in war. That's inevitable. But when you are fighting, if you keep thinking that everybody around you is always making mistakes, you'll never win. You have to take a pragmatic attitude." He approaches life in that fashion.

His political heroes also rebuilt shattered nations. Charles DeGaulle saved France from itself; while in Germany, Ludwig Erhard succeeded because ". . . his entire conception for the reconstruction of the country began with the creation of new moral values for society." The Soviet collapse created a similar challenge for Putin. This book explains what his "effective authority" is all about. It's the best book available this year about a politician with new ideas.

This is a refreshingly candid portrait of the soul of the new President of Russia, a fascinating contrast to "personality politics" that mask any inner feelings of American politicians. Putin trusts the Russian people enough to be honest; our politicians hire spin doctors to create "centrist" or "moving to the right" or "compassionate conservative" images. The contrast is ominous.

Then, stop and think. Does America really need tough, effective authority? Or are we better off with superficial candidates and trivial issues? If Putin succeeds, he will outdo Peter the Great. In America, do we need a great crusade? or merely to be left alone? Another Lincoln? or a Shrub?

This is one glorious little romp of a novel. I personally don't agree that EVERY character in this book is dispicable, I thought Dreyer was perfectly tragic in his eventual realisation, but even so, I don't find the unsympathetic nature to be a fault. The physical world of King Queen Knave is something that pervades the existence of all the characters even to the most grotesque degree (see Franz's chronic disgust), but even though it may seperate their subjective experience to the extent that everybody refuses to understand anybody elses' position, Nabokov fights the deterministic cycle of the Naturalist novel and shows how these walls of relativism can be broken down, and further, that is is even NECESSARY that they be broken down. But more than that, Nabokov twists the arm of fate in his dark conclusion; he delights in showing the authour's mark behind the facade; and there's the expected round of lovely descriptive passages. One shouldn't take Nabokov's "this is by far my gayest novel" too seriously though; this is a farcical romp, but it is one darkly treacherous romp. The reader thanks God that the world around these three main players isn't caught up in the same downward spiral. That creaky boat ride upon the Lindy, the oars fighting, is sharply analgous the overall ride. This is a very good novel, a treat for anybody familiar with Nabokov, but it definitely can stand its own ground. Either by comparison to Nabokov's more brillant later work, or on its own, this novel is a dark little comic-tragedy.

This is the only Nabokov novel I have read, but it sticks in my mind as sensual and tragic... definitely reminiscent of Shakespeare.

"The Graduate" also comes to mind.

Nabokov's descriptive detail puts the reader into the rented room of the nephew, where the first sexual encounter takes place. He doesn't romanticize - he tells everything exactly like it "is" & makes it extremely real.

Very suspenseful at the end, although I see the description on this site reveals the entire ending, so it ruins it for any potential readers!

So don't read that, just read the book. It evoked strong emotion in me, suffering with the characters' situations, frustrations, and desires.

This was Nabokov's second novel, published when he was a mere 28 years old. Thirty-nine years later, after writing so many other fabulous books he said of King, Queen, Knave "of all my novels this bright brute is the gayest." By this he meant that he enjoyed contemplating its "rapturous composition" and reminiscing of how the idea for it first came to him on the coastal sands of Pomerania. The book maintained a special place in his heart. The theme is in many ways similar to Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, as Nabokov himself admits in the Foreword to the revised English version. I love those other books dearly, but Nabokov's contains several twists and turns that are even more dramatic and less likely for the reader to detect ahead of time than either of those other classic husband/wife/paramour triangle stories.

The setting here is Berlin in the 1920's. The young, unsophisticated Franz arrives on the doorstep of his rich uncle Dreyer with hopes of securing a job in his department store. He gets the job and repays Dreyer's magnanimity by falling for his beautiful wife Martha. (Franz's aunt? Hello!) Martha's seduction of Franz seems to be motivated by something at least bordering on pure boredom, but at any rate, the triangle is set. Dreyer, oblivious to this development, plods on with his money-making schemes and inventions/diversions. Martha, in a departure from the more suicidal natures of Anna K. or Emma B. decides rather to begin clumsily plotting her husband's death so that she and Franz will be able to live happily ever after on his money. But things are not so easy in anything Nabokovian are they? Well, things don't work out the way they're supposed to here either, and that's all I will say. Far be it from me to unravel a rope the Nabokov has so skillfully stretched tight. By the end of this story Franz's conscience lies in tatters, and Martha is _____!

The only reason I don't give the book a perfect 5 stars is because the very ending left me a tad bewildered. I attribute that to a fault in my reading of it and trust that you, being much sharper than I, will rate your experience with King, Queen, Knave a star higher than I did.

They did a pretty decent job. Some problems crop up, however, as there are errors throughout the book on specific bands that even the casual fan would catch. Hey, I'm not a fan of all these bands, but I caught most of the errors. There are also proof reading errors throughout the book.

These points aside, most of the reviews are fairly well written and informed. Whether or not you agree with the opinions expressed, the authors generally have solid reasoning for their comments. Still, one could wish for better accuracy for a book that is supposedly so comphrensive.

Hey guys, if you're looking for an additional writer I'm available!

This is a good book but the guides to jazz, rock, and blues are much better and more complete. Also, the classical section is rather skimpy.

This book needs no review. Buy it

Having just finished John Reed's great work of historical journalism I would call it compelling, articulate, a page-turner, etc. It is unfortunate that Reed died so young and was unable to see what his idealistic heroes set loose upon Russia and later the world. Reed was undoubtedly a good man and I don't mean to discredit his character, just his logic.

That aside, this work is fascinating in that it presents so many of the pivotal events in the formation of the Soviet Socialist system from the point of view of someone who was right there while it happened. Add to this the fact that he was an American and thus understood the American sensibility and you have a work of near genius. For the average American reader, this work must have been illuminating for reasons of its style as well as its content.

Reed does have obvious bias in favor of the Bolsheviki, indeed Trotsky is portrayed as a demigod, but he is able to sympathetically depict the plight of the nation of Russia near the close of WWI and enlighten the reader to the numerous causes of the Revolution, and why it must have seemed so inevitable and right to those who experienced it.

Overall a stunning work of journalism and history, highly worth your time.

Although Ten Days That Shook the World is clearly totally biased towards the Bolsheviks, it is still an interesting read. It does an excellent job of revealing the dramatic side of the Russian Revolution, and it gives the events of the revolution the sort of immediacy that can only be achieved by on-the-spot reporting. There are also many facinating quotes and interviews with leaders, like Trotsky. It is an engaging and exciting book, and it is very well written.

However, it is not really ideal (never mind ideal, it is pretty useless) for a research project or for real information. Unless you are pretty familiar with the events of the revolution, it would probably be confusing (he uses many terms without really explaining them and is VERY detailed). Furthermore, the book was written by a dedicated believer in the regime right after the event occured. Reed did not have the benefit of hindsight in writing his book - and he was blinded by his faith in socialism. Some of the events in the book are somewhat inaccurate, and Lenin and Trotsky are totally idealized! One thing that shows how biased Reed was towards the Bolsheviks is that Lenin himself states that the book is an accurate depiction of the revolution. This would seem like a good thing, but actually, when the revolution is depicted in way that is favorable to Lenin, one thing is for sure: it is completely inaccurate! For instance, the book leaves the reader with the impression that the Bolsheviks had planned the revolution much more carefully than they did in reality (it was more a lucky break than anything else).

Nevertheless, this book is irreplaceable as a first-hand illustration of what the revolution was like. Even though some of the information cannot be trusted completely, it is still a facinating book!

This is a most powerfully written American radical journalist's eyewitness account of the Bolshevik seizure of power--recording the excitement of the October days and the beginnings of John Reed's own revolutionary disillusionment.

Ten Days That Shook the World is the classic account of the Russian Revolution of November 1917 by a western journalist and has been admired worldwide since its first publication in 1919. Lenin endorsed it as "a truthful and most vivid exposition of the events so significant to the comprehension of what really is the Proletarian Revolution."

Already based in Europe and sympathetic to the cause of the Russian Revolution, Reed was able to observe dispassionately exactly what was going on and to find out not only what the Bolshevik leaders were doing, but to move among those on the streets and note experiences of the masses of ordinary people. Witnessing first-hand the day-to-day events of the Revolution, he captures in vivid and graphic detail the atmosphere of that time.

An extraordinary document of history in the making, this newer edition is the first with contemporary photographs, while a new introduction by Harold Shukman, University Lecturer in Modern Russian History at Oxford University, sets the work in context. Published to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, this illustrated edition will appeal to anyone interested in modern history. And quite possibly re-ignite a political polemic.

Warren Beatty dared to make the film Reds, which gives us a poignantly epic visual view of John Reed, his life, his loves and his fierce beliefs as read in Ten Days That Shook The World.