Former first lady Jill Biden is opening up about former President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 election in a new memoir providing readers with her perspective from the East Wing.
Her memoir, titled View From the East Wing, will offer a behind-the-scenes look at her role as first lady and the impact of the presidency on their family.
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“For the first time, she reveals her experiences before, during, and after the unexpected ending to her husband’s bid for re-election. Throughout it all, she saw herself as an ordinary woman, living an extraordinary life,” the press release about the book said.
The memoir will also explore her life during a “unique time in U.S. history,” the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, according to the press release.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Biden said writing the book was healing and a “reflection of my four years as first lady.”
“It was kind of cathartic for me to write it, and I wrote about all the, you know, sometimes painful — but other times, most of it really beautiful moments that Joe and I shared during his presidency,” she said.
The former first lady said she has “put things in perspective” with the book, providing what she describes as a “more balanced view” of her husband’s presidency.
Since the Bidens left office, numerous accounts have detailed the president’s health decline during his administration and his support for then-Vice President Kamala Harris during her 2024 presidential campaign.
In Harris’s memoir 107 Days, she details an encounter between the then first lady and second gentleman Doug Emhoff, where Jill Biden questioned whether they were standing by the Bidens, following the president’s disastrous debate performance.
Jill Biden’s book comes during a busy time in the political publishing world. In addition to Harris, multiple suspected 2028 presidential candidates have released memoirs of their own, including Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ).
The former first lady’s memoir is also set to be released ahead of her husband’s memoir, although both the title and the release date have not yet been made public. The Wall Street Journal reported in July 2025 that Biden sold his presidential memoir for $10 million to Little, Brown & Co., an imprint of Hachette Book Group.
Biden said during a Q&A session at the Society for Human Resource Management’s convention in San Diego last summer that he’s been “working like hell” with a publisher to write a 500-page memoir and has been doing a lot of research, according to the New York Post.
While there have been no additional updates to the president’s memoir, which will be his third book, he said his publisher wanted it done by “March of this year.”
“Every president is expected to write a memoir,” Biden said, noting that “most take between three and six years to get it done.”
It is not uncommon for former first families to publish memoirs about their time in the White House.
Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama signed a record-breaking book deal with Penguin Random House in 2017 for reportedly over $65 million, which included individual books from both of them, according to the Financial Times.
Jill Biden previously wrote the New York Times bestseller Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself in 2019, about meeting Joe Biden, then a Delaware U.S. senator, and building a life together ahead of his successful 2020 presidential campaign.
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She also wrote four children’s books: Don’t Forget, God Bless Our Troops; Joey: The Story of Joe Biden; and Willow the White House Cat.
View From the East Wing is set to be released on June 2, 2026.