Marc Leepson


Marc Leepson is an American journalist, historian, and author.

Education

Leepson was educated at Hillside High School in Hillside, New Jersey and George Washington University where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in history in 1967 and his Master of Arts degree in European History in 1971.

Military service

Almost immediately after graduating from college, Leepson's draft classification was changed by his local draft board and he was drafted into the United States Army on July 11,1967. Chosen to be trained as a clerk, he served for two years, including a year in the Vietnam War with the 527th Personnel Service Company in Qui Nhơn. He received his honorable discharge in 1969.

Career

Leepson was a staff writer at Congressional Quarterly in Washington, D.C. from 1976 to 1986. He has been a full-time freelance writer since 1986. He is Senior Writer, Arts Editor and columnist for The VVA Veteran, the magazine published by Vietnam Veterans of America, since 1986.
His work has appeared in many magazines and newspapers, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, and Smithsonian, Preservation, and Military History magazines. He has been interviewed many times on radio and television, including on The Today Show, CBS This Morning Saturday, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, PBS-TV's History Detectives, All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, Studio 360, NPR's Here and Now, To The Point, Morning Edition, The Diane Rehm Show, "Imus in the Morning," the BBC Newshour, Russian Channel 1 TV, Irish Radio, and CBC.
He is a contributor to The Encyclopædia Britannica, and has written entries for the Encyclopedia Americana, the Encyclopedia Americana Yearbook, the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Political and Legal History, and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography.
Since the early 1990s, he has been active in many non-profit groups. That includes board memberships on the Middleburg Library Advisory Board, the Loudoun County Library Board of Trustees, the Library of Virginia Foundation, the Virginia State Library Board, the Friends of Thomas Balch Library, the YMCA of Loudoun County, the Goose Creek Association, and the Virginia Piedmont Heritage Area Association. He taught U.S. history at Lord Fairfax Community College in Warrenton, Virginia from 2008 to 2015, and was Scholar in Residence at Mikveh Israel Synagogue in Savannah, Georgia, in May 2017.
A member of The Authors Guild, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the Biographers International Organization in 2013. He was named the organization's Treasurer in 2014. He received a 2019 National Society Daughters of the American Revolution History Award Medal.

Personal life

Leepson lives in Loudoun County, Virginia. He and his wife, Janna Leepson, have two children, Devin and Cara, and three grandchildren.

Selected bibliography

  • Leepson, Marc. Saving Monticello: One Family's Epic Quest To Rescue The House That Jefferson Built. New York: Free Press, 2001.
  • Leepson, Marc. Flag: An American Biography. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2005.
  • Leepson, Marc. Desperate Engagement: How A Little-Know Civil War Battle Saved Washington, D.C., And Changed American History. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2007.
  • Leepson, Marc. Lafayette: Lessons in Leadership from The Idealist General. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. ; University of Virginia Press, 2025, paper.
  • Leepson, Marc. What So Proudly We Hailed: Francis Scott Key, A Life. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. <
  • Leepson, Marc, editor. Webster's New World Dictionary of the Vietnam War.
  • Leepson, Marc. Ballad of the Green Beret: The Life and Wars of Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler from the Vietnam War and Pop Stardom to Murder and an Unsolved, Violent Death. Stackpole Books, 2017.
  • Leepson, Marc. Huntland: The Historic Country House, the Property, and Its Owners, 1941-2022. Huntland Press/University of Virginia Press, 2023.
  • Leepson, Marc. The Unlikely War Hero: A Vietnam War POW’s Story of Courage and Resilience in the Hanoi Hilton. Stackpole Books, 2024.