Charles Leerhsen has written for Sports Illustrated, Esquire, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, Money, People, TV Guide and Seventeen. He has been an editor at SI, People and Us Weekly, and spent 11 years at Newsweek, where as a senior writer he covered sports, entertainment, family stories and breaking news. At Newsweek he won the National Mental Health Association award for a cover story on alcohol and the family.
Leerhsen's books include Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty, the award-winning Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America, and Blood and Smoke: A True Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and the Birth of the Indy 500. He has also co-written several best-selling biographies, including Press On! Adventures in the Good Life, with pioneer aviator Chuck Yeager, and The Last Great Ride, with entertainment mogul Brandon Tartikoff. He is an adjunct professor at the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism. Leerhsen has three daughters: Erica, an actor in Los Angeles; Deborah, a banker in Hong Kong; and Nora, a lawyer in Chicago. He and his wife, the writer Sarah Saffian, live in Brooklyn, New York.