Joe Biden: A Life of Trial and Redemption

Jules Witcover

oct 2010 · Harper Collins

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Now with four new chapters that explore Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign; his sparring with Trump, both in and out of the debates; and his ultimate election as the 46th president of the United States

Raised in the working-class towns of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Wilmington, Delaware, and with lackluster grades in school and no particular goals, Joe Biden shocked the nation in 1972 when he became one of the youngest elected senators in U.S. history. Over the course of more than four decades, he carved a legacy for himself as one of the most respected legislators in the country before going on to serve as the vice president under Barack Obama and ultimately taking up the office of president in his own right.

Yet Biden’s political success has been matched by personal tragedy and countless challenges. Within two months of being elected in 1972, Biden lost his wife, Neilia, and his young daughter in a tragic accident—a loss that brought him to the nadir of despair and shook his resolve to stay in politics. He suffered two brain aneurysms and career-threatening gaffes and miscues. In 2015, he lost his eldest son, Beau, to brain cancer. These difficult trials left him a more compassionate man, particularly suited for “the battle for America’s soul” in the midst of the nationwide divisiveness brought to a head by President Trump.

Based on exhaustive research by one of Washington’s most prolific journalists, including numerous exclusive interviews with Biden’s confidants and family members, as well as President Obama and the former vice president himself, Joe Biden goes beyond conventional biography to track the forces that have shaped a man whose plainspoken style and inspiring life story have resonated with millions of Americans and whose work has shaped modern American life.

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Jules Witcover has been writing from Washington on politics and history since 1954, first for the Newhouse Newspapers, then the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Star and Baltimore Sun, and his column is syndicated by the [Chicago] Tribune Company. His twenty books include 85 Days: The Last Campaign of Robert Kennedy, The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power, The Resurrection of Richard Nixon, The Year the Dream Died: Revisitng 1968 in America, accounts of the presidential elections from 1976 through 1992, and biographies of Vice Presidents Spiro Agnew and Joe Biden.