Christian Parenti is an American investigative journalist and author. His books include Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis (2000), The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror (2003), The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq (2004), and Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (2011), in which he 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. His 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 Afghan colleague Ajmal Naqshbandi and, following Naqshbandi's capture and murder by the Taliban, Parenti's investigation of the crime.

Parenti's writing is often published in The Nation, and he frequently appears on Doug Henwood's radio show Behind The News on KPFA in Berkeley. He also writes for many other publications, including the London Review of Books, Mother Jones, and Condé Nast Traveler. He was a visiting fellow at CUNY's Center for Place, Culture and Politics, and a Soros Senior Justice Fellow. Parenti has taught at the New College of California and at St. Mary's College in Moraga, California. He is currently a professor at SIT Graduate Institute.