Christian Parenti is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow, contributing editor at The Nation and a visiting professor at Brooklyn College, CUNY. His most recent book is "Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence" (Nation Books, July 2011). As a journalist, he has reported extensively from Afghanistan, Iraq and various parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America and his articles have appeared in Fortune, The Washington Post, The New York Times, London Review of Books, Mother Jones and Playboy. He has a PhD in sociology from the London School of Economics, has held fellowships from OSI, RBF and the Ford Foundation; and has won numerous awards, including the 2009 Lange-Tailor Prize and Best Magazine Writing of 2008 from the Society for Professional Journalists. His three previous books, are: "The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq"; "The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror" and "Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis."