Year
|
Author
|
Title
|
Result
|
Ref.
|
1975
|
R. W. B. Lewis
|
Edith Wharton: A Biography
|
Winner
|
[5]
|
1976
|
Maxine Hong Kingston
|
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts
|
Winner
|
[6]
|
George Dangerfield
|
The Damnable Question: A Study in Anglo-Irish Relations
|
Finalist
|
[6]
|
Alex Haley
|
Roots
|
Irving Howe with Kenneth Libo
|
World of Our Fathers
|
Richard Kluger
|
Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality
|
1977
|
Walter Jackson Bate
|
Samuel Johnson
|
Winner
|
[7]
|
Michael Herr
|
Dispatches
|
Finalist
|
[7]
|
David McCullough
|
The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914
|
John McPhee
|
Coming Into the Country
|
Carl Sagan
|
The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
|
1978
|
Maureen Howard
|
Facts of Life
|
Winner
|
[8]
|
Garry Wills
|
Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence
|
Barbara W. Tuchman
|
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
|
Finalist
|
[8]
|
Theodore H. White
|
In Search of History: A Personal Adventure
|
Barrington Moore
|
Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt
|
Sissela Bok
|
Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life
|
A. Scott Berg
|
Max Perkins: Editor of Genius
|
Alfred Kazin
|
New York Jew
|
Anne Hollander
|
Seeing Through Clothes
|
Peter Matthiessen
|
The Snow Leopard
|
1979
|
Telford Taylor
|
Munich: The Price of Peace
|
Winner
|
[9]
|
Tom Wolfe
|
The Right Stuff
|
Finalist
|
[9]
|
Joan Didion
|
The White Album
|
Edward Hoagland
|
African Calliope: A Journey to the Sudan
|
Douglas Hofstadter
|
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Brain
|
1980
|
Ronald Steel
|
Walter Lippmann and the American Century
|
Winner
|
[10]
|
Jean Strouse
|
Alice James: A Biography
|
Finalist
|
[10]
|
Maxine Hong Kingston
|
China Men
|
John Boswell
|
Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the 14th Century
|
Justin D. Kaplan
|
Walt Whitman: A Life
|
1981
|
Stephen Jay Gould
|
The Mismeasure of Man
|
Winner
|
[11]
|
James Fallows
|
National Defense
|
Finalist
|
[11]
|
T.J. Jackson Lears
|
No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920
|
Dumas Malone
|
The Sage of Monticello: Jefferson and His Time, Volume Six
|
Erving Goffman
|
Forms of Talk
|
1982
|
Robert Caro
|
The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
|
Winner
|
[12]
|
George F. Kennan
|
The Nuclear Delusion: Soviet-American Relations in the Atomic Age
|
Finalist
|
[12]
|
Jonathan Schell
|
The Fate of the Earth
|
Daniel Lawrence O’Keefe
|
Stolen Lightning
|
Kate Simon
|
Bronx Primitive: Portraits in a Childhood
|
1983
|
Seymour M. Hersh
|
The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House
|
Winner
|
[13]
|
Roger Rosenblatt
|
Children of War
|
Finalist
|
[13]
|
William W. Warner
|
Distant Water: The Fate of the North Atlantic Fisherman
|
Theodore Draper
|
Present History: On Nuclear War, Detente and Other
|
David S. Landes
|
Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World
|
1984
|
Freeman Dyson
|
Weapons and Hope
|
Winner
|
[14]
|
David Wyman
|
The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941–1945
|
Finalist
|
[14]
|
John Edgar Wideman
|
Brothers and Keepers
|
Robert Darnton
|
The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History
|
Evan Connell
|
Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Big Horn
|
1985
|
J. Anthony Lukas
|
Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families
|
Winner
|
[15]
|
Tracy Kidder
|
House
|
Finalist
|
[15]
|
Elaine Scarry
|
The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World
|
Alan Riding
|
Distant Neighbors: The Portrait of the Mexicans
|
Eva Keuls
|
The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens
|
1986
|
Barry Lopez
|
Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape
|
Winner
|
[16]
|
Bernard Bailyn
|
Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution
|
Finalist
|
[16]
|
Jonathan Evan Maslow
|
Bird of Life, Bird of Death: A Naturalist’s Journey Through a Land of Political Turmoil
|
John W. Dower
|
War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War
|
Marc Reisner
|
Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water
|
1987
|
Richard Rhodes
|
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
|
Winner
|
[17]
|
Randy Shilts
|
And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic
|
Finalist
|
[17]
|
James Miller
|
Democracy Is in the Streets
|
Charles Mee
|
The Genius of the People
|
Stephen Jay Gould
|
Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle
|
1988
|
Taylor Branch
|
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63
|
Winner
|
[18]
|
James M. McPherson
|
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
|
Finalist
|
[18]
|
Neil Sheehan
|
A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
|
Jane Kramer
|
Europeans
|
Eric Foner
|
Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877
|
1989
|
Michael Dorris
|
The Broken Cord
|
Winner
|
[19]
|
Tracy Kidder
|
Among Schoolchildren
|
Finalist
|
[19]
|
Barbara Ehrenreich
|
Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class
|
David Fromkin
|
A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East, 1914-1922
|
Amy Wilentz
|
The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier
|
1990
|
Shelby Steele
|
The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America
|
Winner
|
[20]
|
Mike Davis
|
City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles
|
Finalist
|
[20]
|
Alma Guillermoprieto
|
Samba
|
O.B. Hardison
|
Disappearing Through the Skylight: Culture and Technology in the 20th Century
|
Kevin Phillips
|
The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath
|
1991
|
Susan Faludi
|
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
|
Winner
|
[21]
|
Thomas Geoghegan
|
Which Side Are You on? Trying to Be for Labor When It’s Flat on Its Back
|
Finalist
|
[21]
|
Melissa Fay Greene
|
Praying for Sheetrock
|
Jonathan Kozol
|
Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools
|
Dennis Overbye
|
Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos: The Scientific Quest for the Secret of the Universe
|
1992
|
Norman Maclean
|
Young Men and Fire
|
Winner
|
[22]
|
Michael D. Coe
|
Breaking the Maya Code
|
Finalist
|
[22]
|
Donald Katz
|
Home Fires: An Intimate Portrait of One Middle-Class Family in Postwar America
|
Nancy Scheper-Hughes
|
Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil
|
Edward O. Wilson
|
The Diversity of Life
|
1993
|
Alan Lomax
|
The Land Where the Blues Began
|
Winner
|
[23]
|
Rosemary Mahoney
|
Whoredom in Kimmage: Irish Women Coming of Age
|
Finalist
|
[23]
|
George B. Schaller
|
The Last Panda
|
Russ Rymer
|
Genie: An Abused Child’s Flight From Silence
|
David Remnick
|
Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire
|
1994
|
Lynn H. Nicholas
|
The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War
|
Winner
|
[24]
|
Jane Mayer & Jill Abramson
|
Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas
|
Finalist
|
[24]
|
Abraham Verghese
|
My Own Country: A Doctor's Story
|
Sherwin Nuland
|
How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter
|
John Demos
|
The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America
|
1995
|
Jonathan Harr
|
A Civil Action
|
Winner
|
[25]
|
Nicholas Basbanes
|
A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books
|
Finalist
|
[25]
|
Madeleine Blais
|
In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle
|
Fox Butterfield
|
All God’s Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence
|
Lawrence Weschler
|
Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder
|
1996
|
Jonathan Raban
|
Bad Land: An American Romance
|
Winner
|
[26]
|
David Denby
|
Great Books
|
Finalist
|
[26]
|
Daniel Goldhagen
|
Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust
|
Richard Kluger
|
Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris
|
Bernard Lewis
|
The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years
|
1997
|
Anne Fadiman
|
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
|
Winner
|
[27]
|
Jon Krakauer
|
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster
|
Finalist
|
[27]
|
James Kugel
|
The Bible as It Was
|
Pauline Maier
|
American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence
|
Stephen Pinker
|
How the Mind Works
|
1998
|
Philip Gourevitch
|
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families
|
Winner
|
[28]
|
Adam Hochschild
|
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa
|
Finalist
|
[28]
|
Ira Berlin
|
Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America
|
Roy Porter
|
The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity
|
Simon Winchester
|
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
|
1999
|
Jonathan Weiner
|
Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior
|
Winner
|
[29]
|
Jane Brox
|
Five Thousand Days Like This One: An American Family History
|
Finalist
|
[29]
|
John W. Dower
|
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
|
Patricia Hampl
|
I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory
|
Jean-Paul Kauffmann
|
The Black Room at Longwood: Napoleon’s Exile on Saint Helena
|
2000
|
Ted Conover
|
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing
|
Winner
|
|
Fred Anderson
|
Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766
|
Finalist
|
|
Frances FitzGerald
|
Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War
|
Laurie Garrett
|
Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health
|
Alice Kaplan
|
The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach
|
2001
|
Nicholson Baker
|
Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper
|
Winner
|
[30]
|
Nina Bernstein
|
The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care
|
Finalist
|
[30]
|
Jan T. Gross
|
Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland
|
Laura Hillenbrand
|
Seabiscuit: An American Legend
|
Sam Roberts
|
The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair
|
2002
|
Samantha Power
|
A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide
|
Winner
|
[31]
|
Chris Hedges
|
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
|
Finalist
|
[31]
|
William Langewiesche
|
American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center
|
Richard Rodriguez
|
Brown: The Last Discovery of America
|
Gaby Wood
|
Edison’s Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life
|
2003
|
Paul Hendrickson
|
Sons of Mississippi
|
Winner
|
[32]
|
Caroline Alexander
|
The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty
|
Finalist
|
[33]
|
Anne Applebaum
|
Gulag
|
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
|
Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age
|
William T. Vollmann
|
Rising Up and Rising Down
|
2004
|
Diarmaid MacCulloch
|
The Reformation: A History
|
Winner
|
[34]
|
Kevin Boyle
|
Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age
|
Finalist
|
[34]
|
Edward Conlon
|
Blue Blood
|
David Shipler
|
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
|
Timothy Tyson
|
Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story
|
2005
|
Svetlana Alexievich
|
Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
|
Winner
|
[35]
|
Robert Fisk
|
The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
|
Finalist
|
[35]
|
Ellen Meloy
|
Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild
|
Caroline Moorehead
|
Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees
|
Anthony Shadid
|
Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War
|
2006
|
Simon Schama
|
Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution
|
Winner
|
[36]
|
Patrick Cockburn
|
The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq
|
Finalist
|
[36]
|
Anne Fessler
|
The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe V. Wade
|
Michael Pollan
|
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
|
Sandy Tolan
|
The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East
|
2007
|
Harriet A. Washington
|
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present
|
Winner
|
[37][38][39]
|
Philip Gura
|
American Transcendentalism
|
Finalist
|
[38]
|
Tim Weiner
|
Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA
|
Alan Weisman
|
The World Without Us
|
Daniel Walker Howe
|
What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America 1815–1848
|
2008
|
Dexter Filkins
|
The Forever War
|
Winner
|
[40]
|
George C. Herring
|
From Colony to Superpower: US Foreign Relations Since 1776
|
Finalist
|
[40][41]
|
Jane Mayer
|
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals
|
Drew Gilpin Faust
|
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
|
Allan Lichtman
|
White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement
|
2009
|
Richard Holmes
|
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science
|
Winner
|
[42][43][44]
|
Greg Grandin
|
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City
|
Finalist
|
[42]
|
William T. Vollmann
|
Imperial
|
Tracy Kidder
|
Strength in What Remains
|
Wendy Doniger
|
The Hindus: An Alternative History
|
2010
|
Isabel Wilkerson
|
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
|
Winner
|
[45][46]
|
Jennifer Homans
|
Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet
|
Finalist
|
[45]
|
S.C. Gwynne
|
Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American
|
Barbara Demick
|
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
|
Siddhartha Mukherjee
|
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
|
2011
|
Maya Jasanoff
|
Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World
|
Winner
|
[47][48]
|
Amanda Foreman
|
A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War
|
Finalist
|
[49][47][48]
|
John Jeremiah Sullivan
|
Pulphead: Essays
|
James Gleick
|
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
|
Adam Hochschild
|
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918
|
2012
|
Andrew Solomon
|
Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
|
Winner
|
[50][51]
|
Katherine Boo
|
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
|
Finalist
|
[50][52][53]
|
Steve Coll
|
Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power
|
David Quammen
|
Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
|
Jim Holt
|
Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story
|
2013
|
Sheri Fink
|
Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
|
Winner
|
[54][55]
|
Lawrence Wright
|
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief
|
Finalist
|
[54][56]
|
David Finkel
|
Thank You for Your Service
|
George Packer
|
The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America
|
Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy
|
Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice
|
2014
|
David Brion Davis
|
The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation
|
Winner
|
[57][58]
|
Thomas Piketty with Arthur Goldhammer (trans.)
|
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
|
Finalist
|
[57][59]
|
Hector Tobar
|
Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle that Set Them Free
|
Elizabeth Kolbert
|
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
|
Peter Finn and Petra Couvee
|
The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book
|
2015
|
Sam Quinones
|
Dreamland: The True Story of America’s Opiate Epidemic
|
Winner
|
[60]
|
Jill Leovy
|
Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America
|
Finalist
|
[60]
|
Ari Berman
|
Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America
|
Mary Beard
|
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
|
Brian Seibert
|
What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing
|
2016
|
Matthew Desmond
|
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
|
Winner
|
[61]
|
Jane Mayer
|
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
|
Finalist
|
[61]
|
Viet Thanh Nguyen
|
Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War
|
Ibram X. Kendi
|
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
|
John Edgar Wideman
|
Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File
|
2017
|
Frances FitzGerald
|
The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America
|
Winner
|
[62][63][64]
|
Adam Rutherford
|
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes
|
Finalist
|
[65][62]
|
Kapka Kassabova
|
Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe
|
Jack Davis
|
Gulf: The Making of An American Sea
|
Masha Gessen
|
The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
|
2018
|
Steve Coll
|
Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan
|
Winner
|
[66][67][68][69]
|
Lawrence Wright
|
God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State
|
Finalist
|
[66]
|
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
|
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
|
Francisco Cantú
|
The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border
|
Adam Winkler
|
We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights
|
2019
|
Patrick Radden Keefe
|
Say Nothing: The True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
|
Winner
|
[70][71]
|
Kate Brown
|
Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future
|
Finalist
|
[70]
|
Rachel Louise Snyder
|
No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us
|
Walt Odets
|
Out of the Shadows: Reimagining Gay Men's Lives
|
Peter Hessler
|
The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution
|
2020
|
Tom Zoellner
|
Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire
|
Winner
|
[72][73][74]
|
Isabel Wilkerson
|
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent
|
Finalist
|
[73]
|
James Shapiro
|
Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future
|
Sarah Smarsh
|
She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs
|
Walter Johnson
|
The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States
|
2021
|
Clint Smith
|
How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
|
Winner
|
[75]
|
Patrick Radden Keefe
|
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
|
Finalist
|
[76][77][78]
|
Rebecca Solnit
|
Orwell’s Roses
|
Joshua Prager
|
The Family Roe: An American Story
|
Sam Quinones
|
The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth
|
2022
|
Isaac Butler
|
The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act
|
Winner
|
[79]
|
Kelly Lytle Hernández
|
Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands
|
Finalist
|
[80]
|
Joseph Osmundson
|
Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between
|
Annie Proulx
|
Fen, Bog & Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
|
Ed Yong
|
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
|
2023
|
Roxanna Asgarian
|
We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America
|
Winner
|
[81]
|
Kerry Howley
|
Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs
|
Finalist
|
[82]
|
Dina Nayeri
|
Who Gets Believed? When the Truth Isn’t Enough
|
Jeff Sharlet
|
The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War
|
Christina Sharpe
|
Ordinary Notes
|