Marc Leepson
Marc Leepson | |
|---|---|
| File:Portrait-leepson,m-9-01.jpg | |
| Born | June 20, 1945 |
| Allegiance | United States |
| Service years | 1967-1969 |
| Alma mater | George Washington University (MA) |
| Children | 1 son and daughter |
| Other work | Desperate Engagement Flag: An American Biography Saving Monticello |
| Website | marcleepson |
Marc Leepson (born June 20, 1945) is an American journalist, historian, and author.
Education
[edit | edit source]Leepson was educated at Hillside High School in Hillside, New Jersey (Class of 1963) 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.[1]
Military service
[edit | edit source]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 (December 1967-December 1968) in the Vietnam War with the 527th Personnel Service Company in Qui Nhơn.[2] He received his honorable discharge in 1969.[1]
Career
[edit | edit source]Leepson was a staff writer at Congressional Quarterly in Washington, D.C. from 1976 to 1986.[3] He has been a full-time freelance writer since 1986. He is Senior Writer, Arts Editor and columnist for The VVA Veteran,[4] 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,[5] CNN, MSNBC, Fox News,[6] 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,"[7] the BBC Newshour, Russian Channel 1 TV (RTV), Irish Radio, and CBC (Canada).
He is a contributor to The Encyclopædia Britannica,[8] 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 (Virginia) Library Advisory Board (President and Vice President), the Loudoun County (Virginia) Library Board of Trustees, the Library of Virginia Foundation[9] (Treasurer), the Virginia State Library Board, the Friends of Thomas Balch Library, the YMCA of Loudoun County (Virginia), the Goose Creek Association (Secretary), and the Virginia Piedmont Heritage Area Association (Secretary, Vice President, President).[10] He taught U.S. history at Lord Fairfax Community College (now known as Laurel Ridge Community College) in Warrenton, Virginia from 2008 to 2015, and was Scholar in Residence[11] at Mikveh Israel Synagogue in Savannah, Georgia, in May 2017.
A member of The Authors Guild,[12] he was elected to the Board of Directors[13] of the Biographers International Organization (BIO) 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. [14]
Personal life
[edit | edit source]Leepson lives in Loudoun County, Virginia. He and his wife, Janna (Murphy) Leepson, have two children, Devin and Cara, and three grandchildren.
Selected bibliography
[edit | edit source]- Leepson, Marc. Saving Monticello: One Family's Epic Quest To Rescue The House That Jefferson Built. New York: Free Press, 2001. Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value). OCLC 46822427
- Leepson, Marc. Flag: An American Biography. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2005. Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value). OCLC 57366106
- 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. Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value). OCLC 122337918
- Leepson, Marc. Lafayette: Lessons in Leadership from The Idealist General. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value). OCLC 651011968; University of Virginia Press, 2025, paper. Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- Leepson, Marc. What So Proudly We Hailed: Francis Scott Key, A Life. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).<
- Leepson, Marc, editor. Webster's New World Dictionary of the Vietnam War. Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- 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. Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- Leepson, Marc. Huntland: The Historic Country House, the Property, and Its Owners, 1941-2022. Huntland Press/University of Virginia Press, 2023. ASIN|B0CMLDRLJR
- Leepson, Marc. The Unlikely War Hero: A Vietnam War POW’s Story of Courage and Resilience in the Hanoi Hilton. Stackpole Books, 2024. Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
References
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- ^ Leepson, Marc. "What It Was Like to Be Drafted", The New York Times, July 21, 2017. Accessed December 13, 2018.
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External links
[edit | edit source]- Marc Leepson’s official website
- National Archives of the United States, June 26, 2014, talk on Francis Scott Key.
- Talk on Desperate Engagement, Podcast and video at Pritzker Military Museum & Library, March 8, 2008
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Marc Leepson at IMDb
- Flag Day 2005 interview, NPR's All Things Considered
- "New Book Traces History of American Flag"[dead link], The Beardsley Report, on Voice of America, July 4, 2005
- "Capture the Flag" Archived 2007-09-30 at the Wayback Machine, NPR's On the Media, June 30, 2006
- Live Chat on Saving Monticello transcript, The Washington Post Magazine, November 19, 2001
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- 1945 births
- Living people
- Columbian College of Arts and Sciences alumni
- 21st-century American historians
- 21st-century American male writers
- American male journalists
- Hillside High School (New Jersey) alumni
- People from Hillside, New Jersey
- Writers from Newark, New Jersey
- People from Middleburg, Virginia
- United States Army personnel of the Vietnam War
- Journalists from Virginia
- United States Army soldiers
- Historians from Virginia
- Historians from New Jersey
- American male non-fiction writers