Marc Leepson
Marc Leepson (born June 20, 1945) is an American journalist, historian, and author.
He grew up in Newark, New Jersey, and attended Hillside High School. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 1967 and a master’s degree in European history in 1971 from George Washington University.
After college, Leepson was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1967. He served as a clerk and spent a year in Vietnam with the 527th Personnel Service Company in Qui Nhon. He received an honorable discharge in 1969.
In journalism, Leepson worked as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly in Washington, D.C., from 1976 to 1986. Since 1986 he has been a freelance writer and serves as Senior Writer, Arts Editor, and columnist for The VVA Veteran, the magazine of Vietnam Veterans of America.
His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, Smithsonian, and Smithsonian magazines, among others. He has also contributed to The Encyclopædia Britannica and has written entries for other reference works.
Leepson has been active in nonprofit and cultural groups. He has held roles on library boards and heritage organizations in Virginia, and he has taught U.S. history. From 2008 to 2015 he taught at Lord Fairfax Community College (now Laurel Ridge Community College), and he was Scholar in Residence at Mikveh Israel Synagogue in Savannah, Georgia, in May 2017. He is a member of The Authors Guild and served on the board of the Biographers International Organization, becoming its treasurer in 2014. In 2019 he received the Daughters of the American Revolution History Award Medal.
He lives in Loudoun County, Virginia, with his wife, Janna (Murphy) Leepson. They have two children, Devin and Cara, and three grandchildren.
Selected books by Marc Leepson include Saving Monticello: One Family’s Epic Quest To Rescue The House That Jefferson Built (2001); Flag: An American Biography (2005); Desperate Engagement: How A Little-Known Civil War Battle Saved Washington, D.C., And Changed American History (2007); Lafayette: Lessons in Leadership from The Idealist General (2011); What So Proudly We Hailed: Francis Scott Key, A Life (2014); Ballad of the Green Beret: The Life and Wars of Barry Sadler (2017); Huntland: The Historic Country House, the Property, and Its Owners, 1941-2022 (2023); and The Unlikely War Hero: A Vietnam War POW’s Story of Courage and Resilience in the Hanoi Hilton (2024).
This page was last edited on 28 January 2026, at 16:33 (CET).