# Promises to Keep (memoir)

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Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics is a memoir by then-senator Joe Biden (later the 47th vice president and 46th president of the United States), first published by Random House on July 31, 2007. A paperback version was published on August 28, 2008. It was published in the run-up to his 2008 presidential campaign.

## Contents

Biden begins by recounting his life growing up in a Roman Catholic family in Scranton, Pennsylvania and later Wilmington, Delaware. He details the 1972 car accident that killed his wife Neilia and their one-year-old daughter Naomi, and the struggles he faced in its aftermath. He then writes about the second chance he was given upon meeting Jill Jacobs in 1975, as he began his career representing Delaware in the U.S. Senate. The book also explores his beleaguered 1988 presidential campaign, during which he suffered from two brain aneurysms, and the physical and political recovery he later made.
Parts of the text describing Biden's early childhood are drawn verbatim from the 1992 book What It Takes: The Way to the White House.

## Cultural reference

The title of the book was inspired by Robert Frost's 1922 poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

## Reception

The Christian Science Monitor praised the book saying "Biden is a master storyteller and has stories worth telling." Likewise, The New York Times called it "a compelling personal story", while Salon commended Biden's response to tragedy as "both admirable and likable".