Marc Leepson – författare

The rough-and-tumble life of Special Forces vet and Sixties pop star Barry SadlerThe top Billboard Hot 100 single of 1966 wasn’t The Rolling Stones' “Paint It Black” or the Beatles' “Yellow Submarine”--it was “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” a hyper-patriotic tribute to the men of the Special Forces by Vietnam veteran, U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler. But Sadler’s clean-cut, all-American image hid a darker side, a Hunter Thompson-esque life of booze, girls, and guns. Unable to score another hit song, he wrote a string of popular pulp fiction paperbacks that made “Rambo look like a stroll through Disneyland.” He killed a lover’s ex-boyfriend in Tennessee. Settling in Central America, Sadler ran guns, allegedly trained guerrillas, provided medical care to residents, and caroused at his villa. In 1988 he was shot in the head in Guatemala and died a year later. This life-and-times biography of an American pop culture phenomenon recounts the sensational details of Sadler’s life vividly but soberly, setting his meteoric rise and tragic fall against the big picture of American society and culture during and after the Vietnam War.

The rough-and-tumble life of Special Forces vet and Sixties pop star Barry SadlerThe top Billboard Hot 100 single of 1966 wasn’t The Rolling Stones' “Paint It Black” or the Beatles' “Yellow Submarine”--it was “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” a hyper-patriotic tribute to the men of the Special Forces by Vietnam veteran, U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler. But Sadler’s clean-cut, all-American image hid a darker side, a Hunter Thompson-esque life of booze, girls, and guns. Unable to score another hit song, he wrote a string of popular pulp fiction paperbacks that made “Rambo look like a stroll through Disneyland.” He killed a lover’s ex-boyfriend in Tennessee. Settling in Central America, Sadler ran guns, allegedly trained guerrillas, provided medical care to residents, and caroused at his villa. In 1988 he was shot in the head in Guatemala and died a year later. This life-and-times biography of an American pop culture phenomenon recounts the sensational details of Sadler’s life vividly but soberly, setting his meteoric rise and tragic fall against the big picture of American society and culture during and after the Vietnam War.

In April 1967, twenty-year-old Doug Hegdahl was knocked overboard from a U.S. Navy cruiser in the Gulf of Tonkin. Initially believed to be a special ops commando, he was turned over to North Vietnamese who beat him and then turned him over to the prison known as the Hanoi Hilton, where Hegdahl maintained a ruse of being a country bumpkin who couldn’t read or write. The North Vietnamese called him “The Incredibly Stupid One,” and guards paid no attention to Hegdahl as he proceeded to memorize information about more than 250 prisoners, which he memorized to the tune of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” Offered release in the summer of 1969, Hegdahl balked—the POW code stipulated that prisoners should be released in the order of capture—but was ordered to accept so that he could provide his information to the American military.In a vividly written book based on archival research, personal interviews, and the author’s own experiences in the Vietnam War, Marc Leepson tells the story of this most unique of American military heroes. Most of the prisoners in the Hanoi Hilton were pilots or navigators—such as John McCain and James Stockdale—and Hegdahl was the only non-officer, the lowest-ranking person in the prison. He was never properly recognized or decorated for his extraordinary efforts after the war, and his story has never been told, except briefly in books like John McCain’s Faith of My Fathers. Hegdahl’s is a story of survival, not only his own, but that of the hundreds of American POWs he helped ensure.

In this account of Monticello's ownership after Thomas Jefferson's death, Marc Leepson turns the spotlight on a family that contributed to the preservation of history, providing evidence of the Levys' role in saving the house.

Assessing the legendary Frenchman and his remarkable military career on both sides of the Atlantic The Marquis de Lafayette is an icon of both American and French history. In Marc Leepson's concise and engaging biography of this captivating figure, we learn how Lafayette, born into an aristocratic French family of warriors, traveled to the colonies at the age of nineteen to fight as a volunteer in the American Revolutionary War. Continental Army Major General Lafayette was soon embraced by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who became his lifelong friends. A fearless, accomplished battlefield commander, he also helped to convince the French court to provide crucial financial and military support to the Americans, which aided their defeat of the British. On his return to France, Lafayette played a leading role in the movement to make France a constitutional monarchy, served as commander of the National Guard during the French Revolution, and as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, opposed Napoleon's rule and was instrumental in ending the short-lived French July Revolution of 83 that brought the 'citizen king,' Louis-Philippe, to the throne. This focused biography of the legendary French statesman and military man offers a unique examination of his remarkable military career on both sides of the Atlantic.