The question for Harold Holzer — former government official, former Metropolitan Museum of Art official — was: Aren’t you about to follow in the footsteps of men like, oh, maybe, Ulysses S. Grant?

That is, men who did something later in life, after they did the thing for which they became famous. Grant was a Union general in the Civil War, then president from 1869 to 1877. Mr. Holzer, who retired as senior vice president for public affairs of the Met last month, has been appointed to lead the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College.

Mr. Holzer, 66, knows about the later careers of men like Grant because he is the author, co-author or editor of more than 50 books about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. As for Grant, he said: “That’s a pretty heavy comparison. I don’t want to compare myself to the commanding general of the Union Army, and he also wrote a book that sold more than my 50 books, times 10.”

He suggested John Hay instead.

“Lincoln had some pretty good staff publicists, although they weren’t called that,” Mr. Holzer said. “John Hay, he was really the de facto press secretary, but they didn’t call it that. Some people say I was the de facto press secretary at the Met. Hay went on to write books and to return to government as secretary of state under McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.”...