'' Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose '' is a 2017 memoir by the 47th
Vice President of the United States
The vice president of the United States (VPOTUS) is the second-highest officer in the executive branch of the U.S. federal government, after the president of the United States, and ranks first in the presidential line of succession. The vice ...
, and later 46th President,
Joe Biden. It was first published by
Flatiron Books
Macmillan Publishers (occasionally known as the Macmillan Group; formally Macmillan Publishers Ltd and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be one of the 'Big Five' English language publi ...
.
Contents
Biden reflects on losing his eldest son
Beau
Beau may refer to:
*Beau (name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name, nickname or surname
*Beau (guitarist) (born 1946), songwriter and 12-string guitar specialist
*Beau (grape), another name for the Italian wine grape Tr ...
to brain cancer and the toll it took on him and his family. He describes his late son as having "all the best of me, but with the bugs and flaws engineered out."
Biden also talks about the political implications his son's death had: his decision not to run for president in
2016
File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses during the 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh ...
was in large part due to the grief he was still processing. He was further discouraged from running by
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
's
entry into the race and
President Obama's implied preference that Biden not dilute her support in the
primary elections.
The title of the book was inspired by a conversation Biden had with Beau after his cancer had progressed significantly. Coming to terms with his own mortality, Beau assured his father that no matter what happened, he would be okay. He then asked his father to promise the same in return.
Reception
''
Vanity Fair'' called the book "a brisk, often uplifting read, a consequence of its author’s congenital jollity and irrepressible candor."
References
External links
Excerpton
Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...
2017 non-fiction books
American political books
Books by Joe Biden
English-language books
Flatiron Books books
American memoirs
Political memoirs
Books written by presidents of the United States
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