In January 2024, Semafor media reporter Max Tani published a small scoop: Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman and writer Buzz Bissinger (most famous for authoring Friday Night Lights) were working together on Fetterman’s memoir, which was to be titled Unfettered and focus on his “political rise and struggles with mental health.”
Much has changed since then. Fetterman’s warmongering—he just proudly endorsed President Trump’s psychotic decision to bomb Iran—is one of many reasons his popularity has nosedived among Democratic voters over the last year-and-a-half. He's isolated himself from fellow senators and hemorrhaged staffers, many of whom have departed from his office and then spoken to the press, both on the record and anonymously, about his reportedly erratic behavior and his obsession with supporting Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza. A New York magazine investigation published in May assigned a much darker definition of “unfettered”: a senator who cannot be reasoned with, who suffers from an addiction to social media, who texts and Facetimes while driving, and is plainly unfit for office.
Given recent reporting, I assumed that the memoir project had been abandoned. Then I noticed something on Fetterman’s 2024 Senate financial disclosure form: a $172,500 advance from Crown Publishing, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Advances are typically paid out in three stages: after a book proposal is purchased, after a full manuscript is filed, and after the book is released to the public. The $172,500 appears to be Fetterman’s first advance payment. Was the book still alive? If the project was dead … what happened? Would Crown chase down a sitting senator and ask for their money back?
After a bunch of digging, I can report that the Fetterman memoir exists, and is currently scheduled to come out relatively soon. Learning as much took forever, because very few people in the know want to discuss, let alone defend, the merits of a John Fetterman memoir. That includes Buzz Bissinger.
When I first poked around in May, I could not find a single update about the Fetterman memoir. None. Out of curiosity, I contacted some friends and acquaintances in the publishing world, asking for their opinions about the viability of a Fetterman book project at this point. They collectively cautioned that there’s little rhyme or reason to the publishing timelines of books bylined by famous people. Some are written and pumped out at lightning speed, accounting for an author’s 15 minutes of fame or an especially newsworthy angle. Others take years to come to fruition, if they do at all.
However, the lack of updates here—plus Fetterman’s precipitous decline in approval ratings, his reported lack of interest in doing any work, and the reality that a book addressing his clinical depression isn’t going to garner sympathy from anyone other the pro-Israel lobby—did not engender much confidence from industry insiders. I was told the Bissinger subplot is another complicating factor: Ghostwriters and their subjects often don’t get along, even in circumstances involving far less curmudgeonly combinations, as J.R. Moehringer outlined in a 2023 New Yorker feature. Moehringer, who described a shouting match he once had with Prince Harry while writing his memoir, relayed a common conversation he has with other exhausted, angry ghostwriters calling him for advice: “Signing off, the callers usually sigh and say thanks and grumble something like ‘Well, whatever happens, I’m never doing this again.’ And I tell them yes, they will, and wish them luck.”
I tried an initial reach-out to Bissinger. My hope was that he could clarify whether Fetterman’s memoir was still in the works, and also discuss his contractual obligation to a politician whose lack of personal and professional relationships have become a matter of public interest. Bissinger didn’t answer me, but I soon stumbled onto something almost as useful: errant metadata. I was directed to the website for Rizzoli Bookstore, which has a physical location in Manhattan. They featured a link to an untitled book (“Untitled 9826”) with John Fetterman as the author. The URL for the listing included the word “unfettered.” There was a release date, too: Nov. 4, 2025. Keywords included “Biography and Autobiography,” “Political,” and “Mental Health.” And there was an associated ISBN number, a commercial book identifier that does not guarantee a title is going to be released, but is certainly a good sign. The book lives?
I plugged in the ISBN number on other websites, including Crown’s website, and found a listing with the same Nov. 4 release date and similar keywords, but no author name (nor the Unfettered title). For whatever reason, Rizzoli Bookstore was accidentally displaying information that wasn’t supposed to be out there.
I cold-called a number of retailers—some chains, some independents—and explained that I was a journalist trying to learn more about a mysterious book authored by John Fetterman. One front-desk worker responded to my query by asking if Fetterman is the guy who’s obsessed with Israel. Yes, I said. “Hold on, let me see what I can do,” she replied. She told me her bookstore had recently placed some preorders for a book with the ISBN number I provided; those preorders are refundable, she added, and sometimes preordered books get delayed or ultimately don't come out. But it was another solid sign that the memoir was moving forward. I separately spoke with someone at a wholesaler who told me that, according to her own mini-investigation, Crown is indeed going to print the untitled book with the ISBN number I passed along, and it’ll be in stock in late September 2025.
Whether it’s late September or early November, it seems fall 2025 is a realistic release date for Fetterman’s memoir. We are firmly within the range where it’d make sense to put out some identifying details about the book, let alone publicize it. And yet, within days of contacting Crown with a few baseline questions (and the ISBN number I found), something peculiar happened: Rizzoli Bookstore’s metadata was updated to remove Fetterman as the author of Untitled 9826. It just says “none” now. (Also, Crown never responded to me.)
I shifted my reporting once more, hoping to unlock a few more details about the production of the Fetterman book itself. Slowly and surely, I got some answers, though only from people who were granted anonymity to speak freely.
According to a source with direct knowledge of the Unfettered book negotiations and writing process, the total advance for the project is approximately $1.2 million, with roughly $700,000 to $800,000 going to Fetterman, and the remainder going to Bissinger. Bissinger and Fetterman share the same literary agent, WME’s Eric Simonoff. (Simonoff did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.)
The book proposal was pitched in late 2023, when Fetterman and Bissinger arranged a day’s worth of meetings with the Big Five publishers (Penguin Random House, Hachette, Harper Collins, Simon and Schuster, Macmillan). I was told the meetings did not go as well as hoped, and some who attended the meetings noticed the dynamic between Fetterman and Bissinger was off. My source with direct knowledge of the Unfettered book negotiations and writing process said that Fetterman didn’t really read the proposal before it was shopped around.
In fairness, Fetterman wouldn't be the first public figure to basically cede creative control of their own memoir to a ghostwriter. Some ghostwriters are completely fine with that situation, while others hate it. According to my source, Bissinger falls into the latter camp. I was told he’s been frustrated with Fetterman’s lack of involvement and interest in the project, and that they’ve had yelling matches as the book has progressed. A different source, who was formerly in Fetterman’s orbit, said they were under the impression that the project had "stalled out" because the senator and Bissinger repeatedly "butted heads."
Pissing off Bissinger after convincing him to pen your memoir would be a rather embarrassing outcome, even accounting for the usual tiffs between ghostwriter and book subject. In addition to writing Friday Night Lights, Bissinger won a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting at the Philadelphia Inquirer, had a lengthy and newsy tenure as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, and published six other books. His participation in this project is surely part of the reason why, even after an allegedly choppy set of meetings with publishers, it fetched a total advance of $1.2 million. It is more or less impossible to present Fetterman in a favorable light at this point, but Bissinger is one of the few living authors who could even attempt to stick the landing.
However, I was told that in the process of having to work with Fetterman, Bissinger went from believing the Pennsylvania senator was a legitimate presidential candidate to believing he should no longer be in office at all—and Bissinger’s concerns have only grown of late, following detailed reports about Fetterman's behavior.
Fetterman’s office declined to comment for this story. And despite my best efforts to reach him via phone and email (including relaying what I’ve heard about his working relationship with Fetterman), Bissinger remained elusive. Compare that to his availability and openness the last time he ghostwrote a memoir: Caitlyn Jenner’s The Secrets of My Life, released in 2017. The Jenner-Bissinger partnership began with a famous 2015 Vanity Fair profile, where Jenner became the first trans woman to appear on the cover of the magazine. A book deal quickly followed. In January 2016, the New York Times reported on an estimated release date for the book, and featured interviews with both Jenner and Bissinger. “It’s her book, but it’s going to be reported out to keep her honest,” Bissinger told the Times.
In November 2016, Jenner posted a photo of the memoir’s title on Twitter, teasing its April 2017 release date. In April 2017, days after the book came out, Bissinger went on Late Night with Seth Meyers, where he vociferously defended Jenner against criticisms from her ex-wife, Kris Jenner. “You are very diplomatic and you’re very kind,” Bissinger said to Caitlyn, after Meyers asked about their intra-family drama. “Kris is full of shit,” Bissinger asserted. Later in the interview, Bissinger gushed, “Caitlyn was so honest, and so heartfelt, and so hard on herself, that I think that’s what makes this book really, really important.”
Over time, Bissinger’s opinion about the Jenner book has soured. Not only did he tell Philadelphia Magazine in 2022 that he hated ghostwriting—he also admitted he “did it for the money” and “spent all of that money on leather.”
It’s entirely possible he had similar motivations when he signed up to work with Fetterman. But if he and the senator are ultimately hoping to sell some copies, they’ll need to work on their marketing strategy from here on out. Hours before my deadline for this story, I attempted another journalism maneuver: I called Bissinger from a friend’s phone, rather than my own. I really, truly wanted to give him a chance to talk to me, even anonymously. Bissinger immediately answered. I barely finished identifying myself when he blared back at me, “NO, GOODBYE.” I think he was driving or something, because he didn’t hang up. I tried to explain the purpose of my call, but he wasn’t having it: “I SAID NO, GOODBYE, JESUS CHRIST,” he bellowed.
I can certainly understand why Bissinger isn’t champing at the bit to talk to me, but that’s also kind of the issue. Does he stand behind any of his work on this project? Does John Fetterman? Is the memoir even called Unfettered anymore? Who knows. It’s probably coming to a bookstore near you this fall, though. Maybe hold off on the preorder for now.
