User:Dumbarton/sandbox/Rick Beyer

Rick Beyer (born in 1956) is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, a New York Times bestselling author, and long-time history enthusiast.

He produced and directed the award-winning 2013 PBS documentary The Ghost Army, which details the story of a top-secret group of GIs who staged a traveling road show of deception on the battlefields of Europe. TV Guide described it as “Argo meets Der Fuhrer.” The film has been broadcast in more than thirty countries. He is also the co-author (with Liz Sayles) of a New York Times bestselling book about the unit published in 2015: The Ghost Army of World War II. Academy Award-winning director Ben Affleck has announced plans to direct and star in an upcoming motion picture based on the documentary and book.

Beyer is the president of the Ghost Army Legacy Project, a non-profit dedicated to preserving and honoring the legacy of the deception troops.

Beyer has also made documentary films for The History Channel, A&E, National Geographic, the Smithsonian and others. He is the author of the popular Greatest Stories Never Told series of history books published by Harper Collins, and described by the Chicago Tribune as “an old fashioned sweetshop full of tasty morsels.” He is also the author of Rivals Unto Death, a 2017 dual history of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.

Earlier in his career, Beyer was a radio reporter in Gary Indiana, as well as a producer at WIND Radio and WLS TV in Chicago. He was also a creative director and co-owner of SMASH Advertising in Boston.

Beyer is a frequent public speaker around the country, and appeared on CBS, NBC, CNN, NPR and Fox News. A graduate of Dartmouth College, he and his wife Marilyn live in Chicago.