is a journalist, historian and the author of ten books, including:

The Unlikely War Hero: A Vietnam War POW’s Story of Courage and Resistance in the Hanoi Hilton (Stackpole Books, 2024)

Huntland: The Historic Hunt Country House, the Property and Its Owners (Huntland Press/University of Virginia Press, 2023)

Ballad of the Green Beret, a biography of Army Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler (Stackpole Books, 2017)

What So Proudly We Hailed: Francis Scott Key, A Life (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2014)

Lafayette: Idealist General (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2011)

Desperate Engagement, the story of the Civil War Battle of Monocacy and the Confederate attack on Washington, D.C. (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2007)

Flag: An American Biography, the history of the Stars and Stripes from the beginnings to the 21st century (Thomas Dunne, 2005);

Saving Monticello (Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 2001; University of Virginia Press, paper, 2003).

The Webster’s New World Dictionary of the Vietnam War (Macmillan, 1999)

A former staff writer for Congressional Quarterly in Washington, D.C., he has written for many newspapers and magazines, including Preservation, Smithsonian, Military History, Civil War Times, Vietnam magazine, the Washington Post, New York Times, New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, New York Newsday, and USA Today and for the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Encyclopedia Americana, and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography.

From 2008-15 he taught U.S. history at Laurel Ridge Community College in Warrenton, Virginia, and is Senior Writer, Arts Editor, and columnist for The VVA Veteran, the magazine published by Vietnam Veterans of America.

He has been interviewed many times on radio and television, including on The Today Show, CNN, MSNBC, Discovery Channel, The History Channel, History Detectives, All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, To the Point, Morning Edition, The Diane Rehm Show, and The BBC NewsHour. He has presented papers, chaired panels at academic conferences, and spoken to students at many colleges and universities, and was elected to the Board of Directors of Biographers International Organization in 2013.

He graduated from George Washington University in 1967. After serving in the U.S. Army from 1967-69, including a year in the Vietnam War, he received his honorable discharge and went on to earn a Master’s Degree in history from George Washington University in 1971. He lives in Loudoun County, Virginia.