Promise Me, America

The story of President Joe Biden’s groundbreaking four years in the White House: his campaign, his presidency, his decision to run again―and to withdraw

In his candid and revealing memoir, Joe Biden reflects on his time as president: the challenges, triumphs, sorrows, and accomplishments that marked his administration amid one of the most tumultuous eras in American history.

Biden took the oath of office on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, where―just two weeks earlier―rioters had stormed the halls and threatened the very foundation of our democracy. He did so while looking out at a field of flags where crowds should have been, except that our nation was in the throes of a pandemic that kept people from gathering. With the nation still reeling from the January 6 assault, shattered by an inept response to a historic pandemic, and paralyzed by a steep recession, the mandate before him was clear but daunting: to heal a divided country, restore the integrity of its frayed institutions, and prove to a skeptical public that the world’s greatest democracy could still deliver for its people.

Now Biden tells the story of a historically eventful presidency. With his hallmark grit and decades of hard-won institutional wisdom, he led an administration that engineered the most sweeping domestic agenda in generations. From orchestrating a historic multibillion-dollar infrastructure renaissance and reviving American manufacturing to passing landmark legislation lowering healthcare costs and tackling the climate crisis, Biden details how he took risks, made gambles, and defied the pundits to build an economy, in his words, “from the middle out and the bottom up.”

On the world stage, Biden recounts the urgent high-stakes diplomacy required to rebuild America’s traditional alliances in the face of new threats. He shares first-person accounts of standing steadfast against authoritarian aggression, modernizing NATO, and leading the global coalition to defend Ukraine in its darkest hours.

And for the first time, he reveals the deeply agonizing calculation behind his decision in the summer of 2024 to step aside from the presidential race and to put his party and the nation before his personal ambitions.

Moving, historic, and filled with the unyielding optimism that has defined Joe Biden’s fifty years of public service, Promise Me, America is a powerful testament to resilience, to the power of personal relationships in service of political progress, and to a leader who put country above all else.

Joe Biden served as the forty-sixth president of the United States. When he took office, he inherited a country reeling from the worst pandemic in a century, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the worst assault on our democracy since the Civil War.

By the time he left office, he had overseen the largest vaccination program in the history of America, built the U.S. economy to become the strongest in the world, and preserved the nation’s democracy. During his presidency, Biden passed historic legislation, including the biggest investment in America’s infrastructure since Eisenhower, the biggest investment in American manufacturing in a generation, and the biggest investment in the climate in the history of the world.

Under Biden’s leadership, child poverty was cut in half, the cost of seniors’ prescription drugs decreased, more people had health insurance than ever before, and a record sixteen million jobs were created.

Before his presidency, Biden served as a U.S. senator for Delaware from 1973 to 2009, when he was sworn in as vice president of the United States. He served as vice president to President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017.

Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Claymont, Delaware. He is the author of Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics; Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose; and the forthcoming, Promise Me, America (on sale November 17, 2026). He resides in Wilmington, Delaware, with his wife, Jill.