Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Joe Biden, the author of Promise Me, Dad, tells the story of his extraordinary life and career prior to his emergence as Barack Obama’s beloved, influential vice president.
 
In Promises to Keep, Joe Biden reveals the experiences that shaped him with his customary candor and charm. He movingly recounts growing up in a staunchly Catholic multigenerational household in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Wilmington, Delaware; overcoming personal tragedy, life-threatening illness, and career setbacks; his relations, as a United States senator for more than thirty-five years, with fellow lawmakers on both sides of the aisle; and his leadership of powerful Senate committees.
 
Through these and other recollections, Biden shows us how the guiding principles he learned early in life—to work to make people’s lives better; to honor family and faith; to value persistence, candor, and honesty—are the foundation on which he has based his life’s work as husband, father, and legislator.
 
Promises to Keep is the story of a man who surmounted numerous challenges to become one of our most effective leaders. It is also an intimate series of reflections from a public servant who witnessed and participated in a momentous epoch of American history and refuses to be cynical about political leadership—a stirring testament to the promise of the United States.

Joe Biden was first elected to the United States Senate in 1972 and served there until 2009, when he assumed the office of vice president under Barack Obama. He grew up in New Castle County, Delaware, and graduated from the University of Delaware and the Syracuse University College of Law. Since 1991, Biden has been an adjunct professor at the Widener University School of Law, where he teaches a seminar on constitutional law. He lives in Wilmington, Delaware.