Photo by Zena R. Mello
Christopher D. Cook is an author and award-winning investigative journalist based in San Francisco. His writing has appeared in national publications such as Harper's, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Guardian, Mother Jones, The Christian Science Monitor, The Nation, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Progressive, and Columbia Journalism Review among others. His work has been published in numerous anthologies, quoted in many books and in testimony before government agencies. In 1998 he won an Aronson Award for an investigative report on welfare agencies requiring recipients to work in dangerous meatpacking plants. Other honors include a 2001 Project Censored Award, finalist for an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, and two-time finalist for the Livingston Award. He has also worked as a reporter for The Oakland Tribune and United Press International, and as city editor for The San Francisco Bay Guardian. His first book, Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis, was widely praised and went to paperback in 2006.
In nearly thirty years writing for national publications such as Harper’s, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor, Mother Jones, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Guardian and others, Christopher Cook has…
Gone undercover at a bingo hall to investigate a scheme funding right-wing Israeli settlements.
Exposed America’s top day-labor corporation’s systematic exploitation of homeless and poor workers.
Revealed how a nationally praised welfare-to-work program was funneling recipients into dangerous poultry plants as a form of captive labor.
Rode Amtrak across America to cover the historic People’s Climate March.
Interviewed immigrant meatpacking workers in small-town laundromats and dilapidated hotels.
Exposed how food corporations infiltrated America’s top nutrition and diet organizations.
Exposed cozy relationships between Gov. George W. Bush and other Texas officials, and corporations gaining welfare privatization contracts.
Journeyed far-flung backroads of India tribal lands to interview villagers about globalization and environmental degradation.
Christopher has dedicated his career to exposing exploitation, holding the powerful to account, and giving voice to the voiceless.
Christopher's first book, Diet for a Dead Planet, was widely acclaimed by both mainstream and alternative media. Jim Hightower calls the book "a powerful and provocative indictment of the food industry." Best-selling author Frances Moore Lappé writes, "Armed with Cook's compelling exposé, we don't have to be victims. We can choose life."
“Christopher Cook’s career has been marked by the persistence and courage of his reporting as well as by the singularly humane empathy which informs his work. From his memorable reports on labor abuses to his current investigation into the corporate control of our diets, Cook is one of those rare writers whose personal commitment matches the caliber of his journalism.”
“Cook is a first-rate journalist. He is one of the best, most thorough, and most consistent reporters I have seen in my nearly seven years at The Progressive... [He] repeatedly takes on important stories and gives them their due, with attentive, high-quality, intelligent journalism.”
“I have worked with hundreds of journalists, and Chris is quite simply one of the very best... He has a keen sense of how economics and politics interact to shape the world we live in.”