The wife of Joe Biden plans to open up about the tumultuous final weeks of her husband’s 2024 reelection campaign in a new memoir that promises unprecedented insight into his decision to withdraw from the race.
Jill Biden, 74, announced on Wednesday that her forthcoming book “View from the East Wing: A Memoir” will detail her perspective on the three-week period that brought her husband’s five-decade political career to an unexpected conclusion. Simon & Schuster’s Gallery Books imprint will release the memoir on June 2, 2026.
According to the publisher’s press release, the memoir will address for the first time her experiences before, during, and after the unexpected ending to her husband’s bid for re-election.
The crisis began with Joe Biden’s disastrous June 27, 2024, debate performance against Trump. The then-81-year-old president struggled with a raspy voice and appeared to repeatedly lose his train of thought, alarming many Democrats who watched the spectacle. While aides blamed the performance on a cold, the damage was done.
Despite initially insisting he would stay in the race, mounting pressure from fellow Democrats concerned about his age and fitness to serve eventually forced Biden’s hand. He withdrew from the campaign on July 21, 2024, and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris secured the Democratic nomination but lost to Trump in November.
In a brief telephone interview with The Associated Press, the former first lady described writing the memoir as a healing process after serving during one of the most tumultuous periods in modern American history.
The Bidens have largely stayed out of the spotlight since leaving the White House in January 2025 following President Donald Trump’s victory over Harris in November 2024, making the memoir’s arrival particularly timely given continued interest in the Biden presidency.
Beyond the campaign’s end, the book will also tackle another painful subject for the Biden family. The former president’s office announced in May 2025 that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer with a Gleason score of nine that had spread to his bones.
Jill Biden acknowledged the diagnosis came as quite a shock, telling the AP that doctors say he will live out his natural life despite the cancer being in his bones. The former president, now 83, visits Washington at least once a week for meetings or speeches.
The memoir will also chronicle the Biden administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, during which Jill Biden traveled around the country encouraging vaccinations while advocating for military families, education, community colleges, cancer prevention, and women’s health initiatives.
She will also detail the administration’s early days, including Joe Biden’s inauguration on the Capitol steps just two weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building following his false claims about election fraud.
For the former first lady, who spent nearly 50 years as a political spouse before her White House tenure, the memoir represents an opportunity to tell her story in her own words—a story she says offers a more balanced view of her husband’s presidency and their extraordinary journey together.
Jill Biden served as second lady from 2009 to 2017 during her husband’s tenure as vice president under Barack Obama. She currently chairs the Milken Institute’s Women’s Health Network and previously authored “Where the Light Enters,” published in 2019, which detailed meeting Joe Biden when he was a Delaware senator and building a life with him.
The memoir’s release comes during a busy season for political books. Former Vice President Harris released her own memoir, “107 Days,” in September 2025, chronicling her abbreviated presidential campaign from the day Biden dropped out through Election Day.
Joe Biden himself sold his presidential memoir to Little, Brown & Co., an imprint of Hachette Book Group, for approximately ten million dollars in July 2025, though the title and release date have not been announced.