The rough-and-tumble life of Special Forces vet and Sixties pop star Barry Sadler The 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 Battle of Monocacy, which took place on the blisteringly hot day of July 9, 1864, is one of the Civil War's most significant yet little-known battles. What played out that day in the corn and wheat fields four miles south of Frederick, Maryland., was a full-field engagement between some 12,000 battle-hardened Confederate troops led by the controversial Jubal Anderson Early, and some 5,800 Union troops, many of them untested in battle, under the mercurial Lew Wallace, the future author of "Ben-Hur." When the fighting ended, some 1,300 Union troops were dead, wounded or missing or had been taken prisoner, and Early---who suffered some 800 casualties---had routed Wallace in the northernmost Confederate victory of the war.
Two days later, on another brutally hot afternoon, Monday, July 11, 1864, the foul-mouthed, hard-drinking Early sat astride his horse outside the gates of Fort Stevens in the upper northwestern fringe of Washington, D.C. He was about to make one of the war's most fateful, portentous decisions: whether or not to order his men to invade the nation's capital.
Early had been on the march since June 13, when Robert E. Lee ordered him to take an entire corps of men from their Richmond-area encampment and wreak havoc on Yankee troops in the Shenandoah Valley, then to move north and invade Maryland. If Early found the conditions right, Lee said, he was to take the war for the first time into President Lincoln's front yard. Also on Lee's agenda: forcing the Yankees to release a good number of troops from the stranglehold that Gen. U.S. Grant had built around Richmond.
Once manned by tens of thousands of experienced troops, Washington's ring of forts and fortifications that day were in the hands of a ragtag collection of walking wounded Union soldiers, the Veteran Reserve Corps, along with what were known as hundred days' men---raw recruits who had joined the Union Army to serve as temporary, rear-echelon troops. It was with great shock, then, that the city received news of the impending rebel attack. With near panic filling the streets, Union leaders scrambled to coordinate a force of volunteers.
But Early did not pull the trigger. Because his men were exhausted from the fight at Monocacy and the ensuing march, Early paused before attacking the feebly manned Fort Stevens, giving Grant just enough time to bring thousands of veteran troops up from Richmond. The men arrived at the eleventh hour, just as Early was contemplating whether or not to move into Washington. No invasion was launched, but Early did engage Union forces outside Fort Stevens. During the fighting, President Lincoln paid a visit to the fort, becoming the only sitting president in American history to come under fire in a military engagement.
Historian Marc Leepson shows that had Early arrived in Washington one day earlier, the ensuing havoc easily could have brought about a different conclusion to the war. Leepson uses a vast amount of primary material, including memoirs, official records, newspaper accounts, diary entries and eyewitness reports in a reader-friendly and engaging description of the events surrounding what became known as "the Battle That Saved Washington." "Praise for Flag: An American Biography"
"There is no story about the flag that he omits.... [We] now have a comprehensive guide to its unfolding."---"The Wall Street Journal"
"The fascination of history is in its details, and the author of "Flag: An American Biography" knows how to find them and turn them into compelling reading. This book brings out the irony, humor, myth, and behind-the-scenes happenings that make our flag's 228-year history so fascinating."---"The Saturday Evening Post"
""Flag "is a valuable addition to American history, and Leepson...certainly is due a portion of authorly glory for this absorbing account of America's national icon."---"Richmond Times-Dispatch"
"Timely and insightful."---"The Dallas Morning News"
"To understand the USA and her citizens, it is necessary to understand the
origins, the legends, and the meaning of our flag. Marc Leepson's "Flag "
is a grand book, worthy of its grand subject."
---Homer Hickam, author of "Rocket Boys and" "The Keeper's Son"
" "
""Flag" is a very significant contribution to our history. And it is a book that everyone who cares about the United States should read."---"Veteran Magazine"
" "

This is the true story of how a Jewish navy veteran and his descendants saved one of America's most recognizable architectural landmarks. 8 illustrations.

The thirteen-stripe, fifty-star flag is as familiar an American icon as any that has existed in the nation's history. Yet the history of the flag, especially its origins, is cloaked in myth and misinformation. "Flag: An American Biography" rectifies that situation by presenting a lively,
comprehensive, illuminating look at the history of the American flag from its beginnings to today.
Journalist and historian Marc Leepson uncovers scores of little-known, fascinating facts as he traces the evolution of the American flag from the colonial period to the twenty-first century. "Flag "sifts through the historical evidence to---among many other things---uncover the truth behind the Betsy Ross myth and to discover the true designer of the Stars and Stripes. It details the many colorful and influential Americans who shaped the history of the flag.
""Flag, "" as the novelist Nelson DeMille says in his preface, "is not a book with an agenda or a subjective point of view. It is an objective history of the American flag, well researched, well presented, easy to read and understand, and very informative and entertaining." "Our love for the flag may be incomprehensible to others, but at least we now have a comprehensive guide to its unfolding."
---"The Wall Street Journal"
"The fascination of history is in its details, and the author of "Flag: An American Biography" knows how to find them and turn them into compelling reading.... This book brings out the irony, humor, myth, and behind-the-scenes happenings that make our flag's 228-year history so fascinating."
---"The Saturday Evening Post"
"Timely and insightful."
---"The ""Dallas"" Morning News"