John Reed was a socialist journalist best known for his eyewitness account of the October 1917 Russian Revolution, "Ten Days that Shook the World." Reed's identification with the Bolshevik revolution resulted from many years of reportage and activist participation in the American class struggle. In 1919 Reed helped to found the U.S. Communist Party. Writer, historian, and activist Mike Davis is the author many books, including City of Quartz, The Ecology of Fear, The Monster at Our Door, and Planet of Slums. Davis teaches in the Department of History at the University of California at Irvine, and lives in San Diego.