A president who spent a long career talking — on rope lines, on the Senate floor, at town halls that ran past schedule — now plans to let a book do most of the talking for him.

Joe Biden, the 46th president, said in a lengthy post on X on Sunday, Nov. 8, 2026, that he will scale back the promotional tour for his memoir, “Promise Me, America,” because of the aggressive prostate cancer that has spread to his bones and that he continues to live with.

Biden, 83, wrote, “While writing the book, I was diagnosed with cancer, a disease known all too well to millions of Americans and their families.”

“Some days are better than others. It hasn’t stopped me. But sometimes it slows me down,” he continued.

Biden said he will take part in fewer conversations about the book than he had planned, trusting the pages to make his case instead.

His medical team remains encouraged by his response to treatment, Biden said in the same post. He thanked supporters for their prayers, which he said have meant a great deal to him, to his wife, Jill, and to the rest of the family.

Biden closed Sunday’s post with the advice from his late father that has guided him since boyhood: “Champ, when you get knocked down, get up.”

What Doctors Found on His Prostate

The cancer surfaced about four months after Biden left the White House in January 2025. Worsening urinary symptoms sent him to doctors, whose exam turned up a nodule on his prostate.

Doctors delivered the diagnosis on Friday, May 16, 2025: the prostate cancer had already reached his bones. His office made it public two days later, on Sunday, May 18, 2025, with a Gleason score of 9, a Grade Group 5 classification and metastasis to the bone.

The Gleason method adds two grades together, with cells graded by how far they have strayed from healthy tissue. In practice the scale runs from 6 to 10, which makes Biden’s 9 the second-highest score available. A newer international system places 9s and 10s together in Grade Group 5, the most aggressive of its five groups.

That May 2025 statement carried one encouraging note. The cancer appeared to be hormone-sensitive, which allows for effective management.

The Bell He Rang in Philadelphia

Biden spokesperson Kelly Scully said on Oct. 11, 2025, that radiation therapy and hormone treatment were underway. Scully confirmed on Monday, Oct. 20, 2025, that he had completed the radiation course that day.

Biden rang the bell at Penn Medicine Radiation Oncology in Philadelphia, where he had been treated for several weeks. The bell marks the end of a course of treatment, not the end of the disease.

A video in early September 2025 showed a healing wound on his forehead, and a spokesperson confirmed he had undergone Mohs surgery to remove skin cancer.

In a September 2026 Prostate Cancer Awareness Month message, Biden urged men to see their doctors for early detection, saying his own disease had already spread to his bones by the time it was found. He pointed to a five-year survival rate close to 100 percent when the cancer is caught early, and he wrote that the radiation from the previous fall had worked as intended.

What His Son Told Don Lemon

His son Hunter Biden offered a bleaker account in an August 2026 BBC Newsnight interview with host Paddy O’Connell, saying he wished his father would complain more and that his health is not good. The cancer, he said, had metastasized into his father’s bones and further, leaving him in pain.

“It’s really sad to watch,” Hunter Biden added.

Hunter Biden struck a steadier tone in a Nov. 3 conversation with former CNN anchor Don Lemon. “He’s doing ok,” he said of his father, while still describing the illness as difficult.

His father had recently visited him in California, Hunter Biden said in the same conversation. The former president attended a speaking engagement at the University of Southern California and spent time with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, discussing politics and the future. The exchanges with students appeared to lift his father’s spirits, Hunter Biden said.

Jill Biden, the former first lady, told NBC News in June 2026: “I think Joe will live with cancer till the rest of his life.”

She said in August 2026 on SiriusXM’s “Let’s Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa” that her husband is “doing okay,” but added that “he will forever live with cancer, and we have to be mindful of it every three months, testing and medicines.”

Slipped at His Wife’s Book Stop

Little, Brown and Co. publishes “Promise Me, America” on Nov. 17, three days before Biden’s 84th birthday and two weeks after the 2026 midterm elections.

Biden let the book slip in June 2026 at one of his wife’s stops for her own book, “View from the East Wing,” when he said it would be out in September. Little, Brown announced the on-sale date on July 15, 2026, and Biden posted an announcement video on X the same day saying treatment had been going really well. A Little, Brown spokesperson said in July 2026 that a book tour and interviews were planned.

The title echoes his 2017 book “Promise Me, Dad,” which dealt with the death of his elder son, Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in 2015. The memoir takes up his decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy, military actions in Afghanistan and Ukraine, and the aftermath of Jan. 6 at the Capitol. Hachette Book Group says it also reveals the deeply agonizing calculation behind his summer 2024 decision to step aside from the presidential race.

Biden suspended that reelection bid after a disastrous debate performance against President Donald Trump and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris. The oldest man to serve as president, he saw age and health weigh on much of his term, and he repeatedly pushed back on accusations about his mental acuity and memory.

Critics in both parties have questioned how candid he was about his health while in office. His team has denied any cover-up.