Christian Parenti

Who is Christian Parenti?

Christian Parenti is an American investigative journalist and author. His books include: Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis, a survey of the rise of the prison industrial complex from the Nixon through Reagan Eras and into the present; The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America From Slavery to the War on Terror, a study of surveillance and control in modern society. The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq, is an account of the US occupation of Iraq. In Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, Parenti links the implications of climate change with social and political unrest in mid-latitude regions of the world. Parenti has also reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ivory Coast and China.

Parenti's reporting in Afghanistan was the subject of an award-winning HBO documentary called Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi. Directed and edited by Ian Olds, the film follows the working relationship between Parenti and his Afgan colleague Ajmal Naqshbandi, and after Naqshbandi's capture and murder by the Taliban, Parenti's investigation of that crime.