John Silas Reed graduated from Harvard College in 1910, then traveled to England and Spain to broaden his view of the world. After his return to the United States, Reed began a career as a journalist for socialist publications: the New Review and The Masses. In 1913, he published a book entitled SANGAR that included a collection of his poems. He was later arrested for attempting to educate people about the working conditions of silk workers. This was the first time Reed spent in jail, but it would not be his last. During World War I, Reed became a writer for the Metropolitan Magazine, where he was a war correspondent, but was forced to return home for kidney surgery. After obtaining a new job at The New Communist in 1918, Reed became interested in politics, and after a meeting in Chicago, for the Socialist Party of America that ended in chaos, two Communist parties were born. Reed became the leader of the Communist Labor Party, traveling to Russia to rally for support from Comintern (Communist International), and barely made it past U.S. Customs Service upon his return. On a trip back to St. Petersburg from Russia, he gave speeches about Moscow and was elected to Comintern's executive committee. His firsthand accounts of the Russian Revolution were documented in his best-known book Ten Days That Shook the World. Reed died in Moscow on October 19, 1920 from typhus and was buried, along with other Bolsheviks, beside the Kremlin wall.