Media Advisory

August 4, 2011

Contacts:    Janet Keating, OVEC - 304-360-4201; Caitlin Graf, Publicist Nation Books - 212-340-8162

Author Parenti Speaks in Charleston Aug. 12 and 13

What: Book signings and keynote speech with award-winning writer Christian Parenti Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (Nation Books; July 1, 2011)

When /Where:  August 12, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. at Taylor Books Annex Gallery 226 Capitol St. Charleston, WV, August 13, 6:45 p.m. Keynote Speech at OVECs Annual Meeting* open to the public at 6:30 p.m. for Parentis speech and book signing.  Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 520 Kanawha Blvd. E., Charleston, WV

More info: The social, economic, environmental and political similarities of West Virginias southern coal-bearing regions to other places outside the US where Parenti travelled while researching his book are uncanny.  One might say that West Virginia, because of the long-term abuses of the coal industry, has been suffering from climate change for more than a century. Like other places, Central Appalachia suffers from generational poverty, loss of community (literally and figuratively), outmigration, drug use and abuse, and violence. 

In his book Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, Christian Parenti argues that the new era of climate war has begun. He takes readers on a journey that intertwines climate change, poverty, inequality, and violence.  Reporting from the belt of economically- and politically- battered postcolonial states straddling the planets mid-latitudes, Parenti uncovers a region defined by widespread violence and profound humanitarian crisis.  This tropic of chaos marks the ribbon of failed states where the impact of climate change is being felt most urgently, exacerbating pre-existing crises.

Parenti is a contributing editor at The Nation, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, and a visiting scholar at the City University of New York. He has a Ph.D. in sociology from the London School of Economics. The author of three books, Parenti has won numerous awards, including the 2009 Lange-Tailor Prize and Best Magazine Writing 2008 from the Society for Professional Journalists. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

See www.christianparenti.com and www.ohvec.org.