This book contains historical photographs from the Russian Revolution. John Reed was on an assignment for The Masses, a magazine of socialist politics, when he was reporting the Russian Revolution. Although Reed states that he had "tried to see events with the eye of a conscientious reporter, interested in setting down the truth" during the time of the event, he stated in the preface that "in the struggle my sympathies were not neutral" (since the book leans towards the Bolsheviks and their viewpoints). Ten Days That Shook the World has received mixed responses since its publication in 1919, resulting in a wide range of critical reviews from negative to positive. However, the book was overall positively received by critics at the time of its first publication, despite some critics' vocal opposition to Reed's political beliefs. George F. Kennan, an American diplomat and historian who had no love for Bolshevism and is best known as "the father of containment," praised the book: "Reed's account of the events of that time rises above every other contemporary record for its literary power, its penetration, its command of detail" and would be "remembered when all others are forgotten." Kennan saw it as "a reflection of blazing honesty and a purity of idealism that did unintended credit to the American society that produced him, the merits of which he himself understood so poorly." On March 1, 1999, The New York Times reported New York University's "Top 100 Works of Journalism" list, which placed Ten Days that Shook the World at in seventh position.