Biden scales back memoir promotion, citing prostate cancer

Former President Joe Biden said on November 8 that the prostate cancer he has been treated for since May 2025 will limit the number of public conversations he can hold about his presidential memoir, which goes on sale November 17.

The post, on X, was mostly about the book, which Biden wrote covers "the challenges we faced, the decisions I made, and why I made them." The health news came four paragraphs in: because of the cancer, he wrote, "unfortunately, I won't be able to do as many conversations about my book as I'd hoped."

He wrote that his doctors "continue to be encouraged by how I've responded to treatment," and thanked people for their prayers and well wishes. The diagnosis came while he was writing the book, he said, calling cancer a disease that millions of Americans and their families know all too well.

What the May 2025 statement said

Biden was diagnosed on Friday, May 16, 2025, about four months after he left the White House, when worsening urinary symptoms led doctors to a nodule on his prostate. The cancer had already spread to his bones. His office announced it two days later, describing "prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone."

The Gleason score is built from how far prostate cells have strayed from healthy tissue under a microscope, graded from 3, the least serious, to 5, the most, with two grades added together. In practice the total runs from 6 to 10. Mayo Clinic says a 6 means the cancer is growing slowly and is unlikely to spread, and a 10 means it is growing quickly and likely to spread.

Biden's 9 is the second-highest score, and under the newer international system a 9 and a 10 both sit in Grade Group 5, the most aggressive of the five groups. Cancer that has spread to the bone is classed as stage IV.

The same statement included a more hopeful line, that the cancer "appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management." It did not say what treatment he would start. Biden wrote on X the next day that, like so many others, he and Jill had learned "we are strongest in the broken places."

Radiation, surgery and a bell

Treatment filled the rest of 2025. Biden started hormone therapy after the diagnosis and had radiotherapy in the fall. In early September, after video showed a healing wound on his forehead, his spokesperson, Kelly Scully, confirmed that he had Mohs surgery to remove skin cancer.

On October 11, 2025, Scully said Biden was "currently undergoing radiation therapy and hormone treatment." On Monday, October 20, she confirmed that he had completed a course of radiation therapy that day and had rung the bell at Penn Medicine Radiation Oncology in Philadelphia, where he had been treated for several weeks.

Patients ring that bell to mark the end of a course of treatment, not the end of the disease, and Scully would not say what might come next.

On September 8, Biden wrote on X that "the radiation treatment from last fall worked as intended." He has kept a relatively low public profile since leaving office in January 2025, and updates on his health since the autumn of 2025 have been occasional.

What his family has described

Jill Biden said in August that her husband is "doing okay," but that "he will forever live with cancer, and we have to be mindful of it every three months, testing and medicines." She was speaking on SiriusXM's Let's Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa.

Days later, his son Hunter Biden gave a starker account in an interview with BBC Newsnight. He said the illness was sad to watch and that he wished his father would complain about it more, and he said the situation is not good.

The cancer has spread, metastasized into his bones and further. It's very painful and it's very debilitating in many respects.

In June, Jill Biden said of the cancer, "It's stage 4, it's in his bones."

The fullest public descriptions of how the disease is affecting Biden have come from his wife and his son rather than from his office, whose last confirmation of a specific treatment was Scully's statement in October 2025 that the radiation course was finished.

A planned tour, then fewer events

Little, Brown announced on July 15, 2026, that Promise Me, America would go on sale on November 17. Biden posted a video on X the same day saying the book was "coming out November 17th and is available for preorder now" and describing his cancer treatment as "going really well." A spokesperson for the publisher told the Associated Press that he planned a book tour and interviews.

Sunday's message described something smaller. Biden did not say how many events had been scheduled, which have been dropped, or whether any interviews will go ahead.

The memoir runs to 480 pages and covers Biden's four years in the White House, including infrastructure investment and legislation on healthcare costs and the climate crisis, according to the publisher's description. It also takes in the war in Ukraine and his decision to leave the 2024 race.

What has not been said

The treatment Biden is receiving now has not been described publicly. The most recent specifics came from Scully in October 2025, when she said he was on radiation therapy and hormone treatment and, later that month, that the radiation course was complete. His September post addressed the radiation he had already finished rather than any therapy he is on now.

Biden's account that his doctors are encouraged is his own characterization of what they have told him. Every update since the May 2025 announcement has come either from his own posts or from his family and his spokesperson, and none has set out a prognosis.

The memoir and its timing

Promise Me, America goes on sale on November 17, two weeks after the midterm elections that returned both chambers of Congress to the Democrats. Biden turns 84 on November 20, three days after publication.

The Atlantic published the first excerpt on November 9. Biden accuses Trump of leading an insurrection on January 6, 2021, writing that the people who attacked the Capitol "came armed to stop the official certification of a legitimate election," and he criticizes the pardons Trump granted to more than 1,500 people involved in the attack. What Trump did that day, Biden wrote, "should follow him to his grave."

The title echoes Promise Me, Dad, his earlier memoir about his son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46.

Hachette Book Group says the book covers Biden's campaign and his presidency, along with his decision in the summer of 2024 to abandon his reelection bid. He left the race after his June 2024 debate against Trump and endorsed Kamala Harris, who became the Democratic nominee and lost that November.

Biden wrote that he is "hopeful the words on the page speak for themselves." The message closed with a piece of advice he says his father often gave him, about getting up when you are knocked down, which he called a good lesson for him and for America.

Jill Biden has told NBC News that she expects her husband to live with cancer for the rest of his life.