As if He Isn’t Busy Enough: Met Museum Head to Write Book

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Daniel H. Weiss, who this month became the top official at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has sold a book about America’s experience in the Vietnam era to Public Affairs, Mr. Weiss confirmed on Monday.

“Having an intellectual life is important to me,” he said in a telephone interview.

Mr. Weiss said he has already completed one-third of the book — to be edited by Peter Osnos — and will finish the remainder over the next year. Asked how he planned to manage this while running the country’s largest art museum in a challenging time for the institution, Mr. Weiss said: “Busy people organize their time, and I’ve always done that.”

The book, “In That Time: A Story of Loss and Reconciliation in the Era of Vietnam,” focuses on Maj. Michael Davis O’Donnell, a helicopter pilot in Vietnam whose 1970 poem — written just two months before he was shot down on a rescue mission in Cambodia — has become an important artifact from the war and is featured on the New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

The poem says, in part:

If you are able,
save them a place
inside of you
and save one backward glance
when you are leaving
for the places they can
no longer go.

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