American investigative journalist
Christopher Leonard (born c. 1975) is an American investigative journalist. He has written three books, The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America's Food Business,[1] the New York Times best-selling Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America,[2] and The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and Bloomberg Businessweek.[3]
Leonard is a native of Kansas City, Missouri and a graduate of the University of Missouri Journalism School.[4]
Leonard began his career at the Columbia, Missouri Columbia Daily Tribune before moving to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.[5] He moved to the Associated Press in 2005 where he focused on agri-business issues.
In 2014 Leonard joined the New America Foundation[4] where he finished his first book, The Meat Racket which received positive reviews,[6] and has been praised as tracing "the evolution of the modern American meat industry".[7] While at New America he began work on his second book, Kochland,[4] which was published in 2019 to positive reviews.[8] In 2019, Leonard helped to found the Watchdog Writers Group at the Missouri School of JournalismReynolds Journalism Institute, where he currently serves as Director.[9]
Leonard was a Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation from 2014 to 2017.[4]
In 2017 he was awarded the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award for Kochland.[10]
In 2019, Kochland was also a finalist for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.[11]