Ballad of the Green Beret, Marc Leepson
Ballad of the Green Beret, Marc Leepson
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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

Author: Marc Leepson

Narrator: David de Vries

Unabridged: 8 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/05/2017

Synopsis

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, US 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.

About Marc Leepson

Journalist and historian Marc Leepson is the author of nine books, including What So Proudly We Hailed: Francis Scott Key, A Life; Saving Monticello; and Lafayette: Idealist General. A former staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, his work has appeared in many magazines and newspapers, including Smithsonian, Military History, the Civil War Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.

He has appeared on The Today Show, CBS This Morning, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, The History Channel, BBC, and NPR; is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica; and edited the Webster's New World Dictionary of the Vietnam War. He served with the U.S. Army in Vietnam in 1967-68, and is arts editor, senior writer, and columnist for the VVA Veteran. He taught U.S. history at Lord Fairfax Community College in Warrenton, Virginia, from 2008 to 2015, and lives in northern Virginia.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jeff

Interesting life story of Barry Sadler who composed and sang the sixties hit, "The Ballad of the Green Berets" and wrote the best-selling Casca, the eternal mercenary paperback series. Born and raised in a whorehouse in Leadville, Colorado, Sadler became a pop star, then an arms dealer and eventuall......more

Goodreads review by Phillip

Barry Sadler had a huge hit with his salute to the men of the army's special forces: also known as the green berets. This singing soldier did not want to be a recruitment poster boy because he proffered the military life. Barry Sadler is known to readers today as the author of the Casca the Eternal......more

Goodreads review by Elizabeth

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 Paint It Black or Yellow Submarine --it was The Ballad of the Green Berets, a hyper-patriotic tribute to the men of the Special Forces by Vietnam vet Staff Sergeant Barry......more

Goodreads review by A.

Mr. Leepson digs beneath the well-known one-dimensional public-relations creation “Barry Sadler” to reveal an intriguingly complex and resilient man. Along the way, there are insights into the U.S. military, the recording business, Hollywood, and the publishing world, as well as vivid portraits of s......more

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