Three years ago, Marc Leepson completed a biography of Francis Scott Key, author of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Leepson is back with a biography of a different American songwriter, U.S. Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler.

Sadler's claim to fame rests entirely on "The Ballad of the Green Berets." This was a wildly popular, pro-military, patriotic folk song released in early 1966. The lyrics did not explicitly mention the war in Vietnam. Sadler, however, had served in Vietnam as an Army Special Forces medic and was still on active duty. The Special Forces wore a green beret as a distinguishing feature of their uniform, giving rise to the nickname "the Green Berets."

Leepson makes clear that Sadler was extraordinarily fortunate in having his song released at a time when the war in Vietnam was still widely supported by the American public. By 1967, as troop numbers in Vietnam increased – as well as casualties – the tide had begun to turn, eventually becoming a flood of anti-war sentiment in the summer of 1968.

Sadler's commercial success with "The Ballad" occurred when he was 25 years old. Leepson's deeply researched biography educates the reader on the details of what happened in his subject's life before, during, and after this defining moment of his existence. The "before" part is a short and simple annal of the poor.

Leepson had combed the records to delineate a hardscrabble life in Leadville, Colorado, father dead of cancer by the time he was five, mother working as a prostitute, stability found only at a neighbor's family house, not completing high school, enlistment in the US Air Force at age 17 not for patriotic reasons but because it solved the ongoing problem of being hungry.

Sadler's life in the Air Force for four years and his subsequent life in the Army before "The Ballad" are not particularly noteworthy. Leepson diligently describes the minor events in Sadler's relatively uneventful military career. As a slightly younger Vietnam veteran himself, Leepson captures the ordinary experience of many Americans encountering the country: "More than one American who stepped out onto the tarmac at Tan Son Nhut remarked that the smell brought to mind burning excrement" (pg. 42).

The book moves at a steady, deliberate pace covering Sadler's relatively slow path to securing a recording contract with RCA. Leepson duly documents the efforts of Sadler's friends, promoters, and enablers. He goes on to document the virtually overnight success of "The Ballad" as a single and as part of an associated album when these were released in January 1966. He notes, in particular, the tie-in with Robin Moore's highly successful work of fiction "The Green Berets" published the previous year.

Leepson shows in painstaking detail how Sadler's rise to fame – particularly after his national TV appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show – was appropriated by his military superiors for recruiting purposes. Every single appearance at every single location is meticulously noted, as Sadler crisscrosses the country singing his ballad and being a public relations vehicle for the Army. Leepson does not make the point explicitly, but there is a clear suggestion that Sadler was being misused – not unlike Clint Eastwood's suggestion in the movie "Flags of Our Fathers" that putting the heroes of Iwo Jima on a tour to sell war bonds was an abuse of their talents and experience.

Sadler's fame and the popularity of his music were somewhat short-lived. Follow-up records and albums were not nearly as successful, particularly as the military and the Vietnam War became increasingly unpopular. Leepson, however, resists the temptation to depict Sadler's life as a momentary burst of illumination in a Fourth of July sky. Unlike Cardinal Wolsey in Shakespeare's Henry VIII, Sadler never could have said – or thought – that "I have touched the highest point of all my greatness; And, from that full meridian of my glory, I haste now to my setting: I shall fall Like a bright exhalation in the evening, And no man see me more".

Leepson patiently tracks the 24 years of Sadler's life after "The Ballad" with its multiple vices and vicissitudes. These include Sadler murdering his girlfriend's abusive ex-lover in Nashville and serving only 28 days in jail for the crime; Sadler's move to Guatemala to drink, carouse, and churn out a highly commercially successful pulp fiction series about Casca Rufio Longinus, "the eternal mercenary"; Sadler's drunken, self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head that left him quadriplegic and cognitively impaired; the final, shabby, legal squabbling between his mother Bebe and his wife Lavona – mother of his three children – who never divorced him and always – when needed – stood by her man.

Sadler was born on the Feast of All Saints, November 1st, 1940. He died four days after his 49th birthday on November 5th, 1989. As told by Leepson, Sadler was no saint, but did indeed have a number of redeeming features: a desire to succeed in his chosen military profession, high intelligence, compassion as a medic, willingness to follow orders, sensitivity and creativity, a capacity for hard work, an ability to deliver the books he was contracted to deliver – though they were usually late.

Marc Leepson has delivered a book that is an interesting, well-written read. It is a dense, highly-detailed account of an ordinary – but peculiar – life. He considers Barry Sadler "very likely the most famous Vietnam veteran of his time – and perhaps of all time" (pg. 232). That title might better belong to General William Westmoreland, Lieutenant William Calley, or Admiral James Stockdale. Sadler is a mere footnote to the Vietnam War – those old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago. In Leepson's telling, though, he is an exquisitely footnoted footnote. Barry Sadler's all-American life is well worth knowing about, and Marc Leepson's account of it is well worth the reading.