“[A] stunning book… well written and presented. Weiss, the president and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is an accomplished researcher and writer. He has produced a nicely constructed offering that threads a historical narrative of the Vietnam War into the story of Army Capt. Michael D. O’Donnell…I enjoyed this book. I recommend that it become a staple in high school curricula as a resource during the study of the Vietnam War.” —VVA Veteran
“Poignant…Weiss brilliantly evokes O’Donnell’s fatal mission and the toll his MIA status took on his loved ones…As a précis on the tragic place Vietnam holds in the American consciousness… this slim book succeeds admirably.”
—Publishers Weekly
“So many years after the Vietnam War, Dan Weiss has written an elegiac book about a soldier and poet who died when his helicopter went down in the jungle. A tribute to all soldiers who died in Vietnam, it’s also a reminder that soldiers die at the will of people who may or may not understand what they are sending them to die for.”
—Frances Fitzgerald, author of Fire in the Lake
“They called it the pucker factor—the helplessness you felt riding in a chopper taking fire from below. It took half a century to dull those memories. Dan Weiss brought them back in one chapter.” —James Sterba, Vietnam correspondent, New York Times, 1969–1970
“In That Time rescues a young man’s life from the jungle ravine where his helicopter crashed during the Vietnam War and was left undiscovered for decades. Like thousands of other soldiers whose lives had barely begun only to be squandered in that war, Michael O’Donnell had his hopes and dreams, family and friends. His poems about the war are still shared by veterans. Weiss examines O’Donnell’s loss with meticulous and civic compassion.”
—John Balaban, author of Remembering Heaven’s Face
“Dan Weiss has told a compelling story about the creative and artistic spirit of one soldier, but learning about Michael O’Donnell forces us to remember that there were more than 58,000 such stories of lives cut short; wives, parents, and siblings left behind; children unborn; songs not sung; and poems not written. Each of these deaths is like a jagged scar on the soul of our nation, made all the more infuriating for having occurred as part of a poorly explained and inconclusive war. In That Time reminds us what happens when leaders fail, that at the end of every bullet is someone’s son or daughter, someone like Michael O’Donnell.”
—William S. Cohen, secretary of defense, 1997–2001
10/07/2019
Art historian Weiss (Remaking College: Innovation and the Liberal Arts) eulogizes Michael O’Donnell, a poet, folk musician, and U.S. Army helicopter pilot killed in the Vietnam War, and summarizes “how America lost its way in the 1960s” in this poignant account. In March 1970, O’Donnell and his crew flew their helicopter into Cambodia to rescue a reconnaissance team “pinned down under heavy fire.” They picked up the commandos, but were hit by a missile on their ascent; an air support team arrived just in time to see the helicopter burst into flames and disappear beneath the jungle canopy. Declared missing-in-action, O’Donnell left behind a cache of poems, one of which has been widely anthologized: “And in that time/ when men decide and feel safe/ to call the war insane,/ take one moment to embrace/ those gentle heroes/ you left behind.” Weiss brilliantly evokes O’Donnell’s fatal mission and the toll his MIA status took on his loved ones (his remains were recovered in 2001), but much of the war and postwar history feels like filler. As a précis on the tragic place Vietnam holds in the American consciousness, however, this slim book succeeds admirably. Agent: Karen Gantz, Karen Gantz Literary Management (Nov.)
