National Book Award for Nonfiction

The National Book Award for Nonfiction is one of five U.S. annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize outstanding literary work by U.S. citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers". ^[1] The panelists are five "writers who are known to be doing great work in their genre or field". ^[2]

The original National Book Awards recognized the "Most Distinguished" biography and nonfiction books (two) of 1935 and 1936, and the "Favorite" nonfiction books of 1937 to 1940. The "Bookseller Discovery" and the "Most Original Book" sometimes recognized nonfiction. (See below.)

The general "Nonfiction" award was one of three when the National Book Awards were re-established in 1950 for 1949 publications, which the National Book Foundation considers the origin of its current Awards series. ^[3] From 1964 to 1983, under different administrators, there were multiple nonfiction categories. ^[3]

The current Nonfiction award recognizes one book written by a U.S. citizen and published in the U.S. from December 1 to November 30. The National Book Foundation accepts nominations from publishers until June 15, requires mailing nominated books to the panelists by August 1, and announces five finalists in October. The winner is announced on the day of the final ceremony in November. The award is $10,000 and a bronze sculpture; other finalists get $1000, a medal, and a citation written by the panel. ^[4] The sculpture by Louise Nevelson dates from the 1980 awards. ^[5] The $10,000 and $1000 cash prizes and autumn recognition for current-year publications date from 1984. ^{[6] [7] [lower-alpha 1]}

About 200 books were nominated for the 1984 award when the single award for general nonfiction was restored. ^[7]

Multiple nonfiction categories (1964-1983)

For the 1963/1964 cycle, three new award categories replaced "Nonfiction": Arts and Letters; History and Biography; Science, Philosophy and Religion. For the next twenty years there were at least three award categories for nonfiction books marketed to adult readers and the term "Nonfiction" was used only 1980 to 1983 ("General Nonfiction", hardcover and paperback).

Scope of "Nonfiction" as covered in the following tables

timespan	of all awards	list of "Nonfiction" categories covered below
1964–1966	3 of 5	Arts and Letters; History and Biography; Science, Philosophy and Religion
1967–1968	3 of 6
1969–1971	3 of 7	Arts and Letters; History and Biography; "The Sciences" or "Philosophy and Religion" alternating
1972–1975	6 of 10	Arts and Letters; Biography; Contemporary Affairs; History; Philosophy and Religion; The Sciences
1976	3 of 6	Arts and Letters; Contemporary Affairs; History and Biography
1980	16 of 30+	Autobiography; Biography; Current Interest; General Nonfiction; History; Religion/Inspiration; Science
1977–1979	3 of 7	Biography and Autobiography; Contemporary Thought; History
1981–1983	8 of 20+	Autobiography/Biography; General Nonfiction; History; Science (each hardcover and paperback)

Recipients

1935-1940

The National Book Awards for 1935 to 1940 annually recognized the "most distinguished" or "favorite" book of General Nonfiction or simply Nonfiction. In 1935 and 1936 there was distinct award to the most distinguished Biography; both winners were autobiographies. Meanwhile, four of the six general nonfiction winners were autobiographical and one more was a biography. Furthermore, all books were eligible for the "Bookseller Discovery" and "Most Original Book" (two awards); nonfiction winners are listed here. In 1937 and 1939 alone, the New York Times reported close seconds and runners up respectively. ^{[8] [9]}

There was only one National Book Award for 1941, the Bookseller Discovery, which recognized a novel; ^[10] then none until their 1950 revival for 1949 books in three categories including general Nonfiction.

National Book Awards presented to nonfiction books, 1935-1940

Year	Category	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1935	Nonfiction	Anne Morrow Lindbergh	North to the Orient	Winner	[11]
		Vincent Sheean	Personal History	Finalist
1936	Most Original Book	Della T. Lutes	The Country Kitchen	Winner	[12] [13]
	Nonfiction	Van Wyck Brooks	The Flowering of New England: 1815–1865	Winner	[13]
1937	Most Original Book	Carl Crow	Four Hundred Million Customers: The Experiences—Some Happy, Some Sad, of an American Living in China, and What They Taught Him	Winner	[8]
	Nonfiction	Ève Curie	Madame Curie	Winner	[8]
		Lin Yutang	The Importance of Living [lower-alpha 2]	Finalist
1938	Bookseller Discovery	David Fairchild	The World Was My Garden: Travels of a Plant Explorer	Winner	[14]
	Most Original Book	Margaret Halsey	With Malice Toward Some	Winner	[15] [14]
	Nonfiction	Anne Morrow Lindbergh	Listen! The Wind	Winner	[14]
1939	Nonfiction	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry	Wind, Sand and Stars	Winner	[16] [9]
		Pierre van Paassen	Days of Our Years	Finalist
1940	Bookseller Discovery	Perry Burgess	Who Walk Alone	Winner	[17]
	Nonfiction	Hans Zinsser	As I Remember Him: The Biography of R.S.	Winner	[17]

1950s

The first awards in the current series were presented to the best books of 1949 at the annual convention dinner of the booksellers, book publishers, and book manufacturers in New York City, March 16, 1950. There were honorable mentions ("special citations") in the non-fiction category only. ^[18]

National Book Awards presented to nonfiction books, 1950-1963

Year	Author	Title	Subject	Result	Ref.
1950	Ralph L. Rusk	The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson	Ralph Waldo Emerson, American philosopher, essayist, and poet (1803–1882)	Winner	[19]
	Lincoln Barnett	The Universe and Dr. Einstein		Finalist
	Harry Allen Overstreet	The Mature Mind		Finalist
	Eleanor Roosevelt	This I Remember	Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States (1933–1945), diplomat, and activist	Finalist
	Lillian Smith	Killers of the Dream		Finalist
	Kenneth P. Williams	Lincoln Finds a General		Finalist
1951	Newton Arvin	Herman Melville	Herman Melville, American writer and poet (1819–1891)	Winner	[20]
1952	Rachel Carson	The Sea Around Us		Winner	[21]
1953	Bernard De Voto,	The Course of Empire		Winner	[22]
1954	Bruce Catton	A Stillness at Appomattox		Winner	[23]
1955	Joseph Wood Krutch	The Measure of Man		Winner	[24]
1956	Herbert Kubly	An American in Italy		Winner	[25]
1957	George F. Kennan	Russia Leaves the War		Winner	[26]
1958	Catherine Drinker Bowen	The Lion and the Throne	Edward Coke, English lawyer and judge	Winner	[27]
1959	J. Christopher Herold	Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël	Madame de Staël, Swiss/French author (1766–1817)	Winner	[28]

1960s

1960-1963

National Book Awards presented to nonfiction books, 1960-1963

Year	Author	Title	Subject	Result	Ref.
1960	Richard Ellmann	James Joyce	James Joyce, Irish novelist and poet (1882–1941)	Winner	[29]
1961	William L. Shirer	The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich	Nazi Germany, Germany under control of the Nazi Party, 1933 to 1945	Winner	[30]
1962	Lewis Mumford	The City in History: Its Origins, its Transformations and its Prospects		Winner	[31]
1963	Leon Edel	Henry James	Henry James, American-born British writer and literary critic	Winner	[32]

1964-1969

From 1964-1969, winners were presented by specific categories (e.g., Arts and Letters). However, finalists were presented in one general nonfiction category. Individual categories of finalists have been guessed.

Arts and Letters

National Book Awards presented to nonfiction books, Arts and Letters,1964-1969

Year	Author	Title	Subject	Result
1964 [33]	Aileen Ward	John Keats: The Making of a Poet	John Keats, English Romantic poet (1795–1821)	Winner
	Walter Jackson Bate	John Keats	John Keats, English Romantic poet (1795–1821)	Finalist
	Francis Steegmuller	Apollinaire: Poet among the Painters	Guillaume Apollinaire, French poet and writer	Finalist
1965 [34]	Eleanor Clark	The Oysters of Locmariaquer		Winner
	Eric Bentley	The Life of the Drama		Finalist
	Robert Brustein	The Theater of Revolt: An Approach to Modern Drama		Finalist
	Edward Dahlberg	Because I Was Flesh	Edward Dahlberg, American writer	Finalist
	Ralph Ellison	Shadow and Act		Finalist
	Howard Mumford Jones	O Strange New World: American Culture, the Formative Years		Finalist
1966 [35]	Janet Flanner	Paris Journal, 1944–1965		Winner
	Alfred Kazin	Starting Out in the Thirties		Finalist
	R. W. B. Lewis	Trials of the Word: Essays in American Literature and the Humanistic Tradition		Finalist
	Philip Rahv	The Myth and the Powerhouse		Finalist
	Lionel Trilling	Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning		Finalist
	René Wellek	History of Modern Criticism: 1750–1950		Finalist
1967 [36]	Justin Kaplan	Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography	Mark Twain, American author and humorist (1835–1910)	Winner [37]
	Oliver Larkin	Daumier: Man of His Time	Honoré Daumier, French artist (1808–1879)	Finalist
	Frederick A. Pottle	James Boswell: The Earlier Years	James Boswell, 18th-century Scottish lawyer, diarist, and author	Finalist
	Isaac Bashevis Singer	In My Father's Court	Isaac Bashevis Singer, Jewish American author (1903–1991)	Finalist
	Susan Sontag	Against Interpretation and Other Essays		Finalist
	Lawrance Thompson	Robert Frost: The Early Years	Robert Frost, American poet (1874–1963)	Finalist
1968 [38]	William Troy	Selected Essays		Winner
	R. P. Blackmur	A Primer of Ignorance		Finalist
	Frank Conroy	Stop-Time	Frank Conroy, American author	Finalist
	Leonard B. Meyer	Music, the Arts and Ideas		Finalist
	M. L. Rosenthal	The New Poets		Finalist
	Stanley Weintraub	Beardsley: A Biography	Aubrey Beardsley, English illustrator and author (1872–1898)	Finalist
1969 [39]	Norman Mailer	The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History		Winner
	Hannah Arendt	Men in Dark Times		Finalist
	Peter Gay	Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider		Finalist [40]
	Gordon S. Haight	George Eliot: A Biography	George Eliot, English novelist, essayist, poet and journalist (1819–1880)	Finalist
	Gertrude Himmelfarb	Victorian Minds		Finalist

History and Biography

Year	Author	Title	Subject	Result
1964 [33]	William H. McNeill	The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community		Winner [41]
	Shelby Foote	The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. II, Fredericksburg to Meridian		Finalist
	Richard Hofstadter	Anti-intellectualism in American Life		Finalist
	Seymour Martin Lipset	The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective		Finalist
	Peter Lyon	Success Story: The Life and Times of S. S. McClure	S. S. McClure	Finalist
	Bertram D. Wolfe	The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera	Diego Rivera, Mexican muralist (1886–1957)	Finalist
1965 [34]	Louis Fischer	The Life of Lenin	Vladmir Lenin, Russian politician, communist theorist and founder of the Soviet Union	Winner
	Oscar Lewis	Pedro Martinez: A Mexican Peasant and His Family		Finalist
	R. R. Palmer	Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800		Finalist
	Willie Lee Nichols Rose	Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment	Port Royal Experiment, program begun during the American Civil War in which former slaves successfully worked on the land abandoned by planters	Finalist
	Ernest Samuels	Henry Adams: The Major Phase	Henry Adams, American historian and Adams political family member (1838–1918)	Finalist
	Richard J. Whalen	The Founding Father: The Story of Joseph P. Kennedy	Joseph P. Kennedy	Finalist
1966 [35]	Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.	A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House	John F. Kennedy, President of the United States from 1961 to 1963	Winner
	Irving Brant	The Bill of Rights: Its Origin and Meaning	United States Bill of Rights, First ten amendments to the US Constitution	Finalist
	Edward Chase Kirkland	Charles Francis Adams, Jr., 1835–1915: Patrician at Bay	Charles Francis Adams, Jr., American author and historian (1835–1915)	Finalist
	Richard B. Morris	The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence		Finalist
	Robert Shaplen	The Lost Revolution: The U.S. in Vietnam, 1946–1966	Vietnam War, Cold War conflict in Southeast Asia from 1955 to 1975	Finalist
	Theodore H. White	The Making of the President, 1964		Finalist
1967 [36]	Peter Gay	The Enlightenment, Vol. I: The Rise of Modern Paganism		Winner
	James H. Billington	The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretative History of Russian Culture		Finalist
	David Brion Davis	The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture		Finalist [42]
	Martin Duberman	James Russell Lowell	James Russell Lowell, American poet, critic, editor, and diplomate (1819–1891)	Finalist
	Barrington Moore, Jr.	Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World		Finalist
	Peter Štanský and William Abrahams	Journey to the Frontier: Two roads to the Spanish Civil War		Finalist
1968 [38]	George F. Kennan	Memoirs: 1925–1950	George F. Kennan, American diplomat, political scientist and historian (1904–2005)	Winner
	Henry Bragdon	Woodrow Wilson: The Academic Years	Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States from 1913 to 1921	Finalist
	Louis J. Halle	The Cold War as History		Finalist
	Roger Hilsman	To Move a Nation: The Politics of Foreign Policy in the Administration of John F. Kennedy	John F. Kennedy, President of the United States from 1961 to 1963	Finalist
	Nathan Silver	Lost New York	Former New York City buildings	Finalist
1969 [39]	Winthrop Jordan	White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812		Winner
	Nuel Pharr Davis	Lawrence and Oppenheimer	Ernest Lawrence, American nuclear physicist (1901–1958), and J. Robert Oppenheimer, American theoretical physicist (1904–1967)	Finalist
	Alvin M. Josephy, Jr.	The Indian Heritage of America		Finalist
	Norman Mailer	Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republic and Democratic Conventions of 1968		Finalist
	David M. Potter	The South and the Sectional Conflict	Origins of the American Civil War	Finalist

Science, Philosophy and Religion

National Book Awards: Nonfiction books, Science, Philosophy and Religion, 1964-1969

Year	Author	Title	Subject	Result
1964 [33]	Christopher Tunnard and Boris Pushkarev	Man-made America: Chaos or Control?		Winner
	James Baldwin	The Fire Next Time		Finalist
	Raymond Fredric Dasmann	The Last Horizon	Conservation biology, Study of threats to biological diversity	Finalist
	Howard Ensign Evans	Wasp Farm	Entomology, Scientific study of insects	Finalist
	Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan	Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians and Irish of New York City		Finalist
	Stewart Udall	The Quiet Crisis	Conservation of Natural Resources, Study of threats to biological diversity	Finalist
1965 [34]	Norbert Wiener	God & Golem, Inc.: A Comment on Certain Points Where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion		Winner
	Walter Ciszek	With God in Russia	Walter Ciszek, Polish-American Jesuit priest and missionary in the Soviet Union	Finalist
	Theodosius Dobzhansky	Heredity and the Nature of Man		Finalist
	David Hawkins	The Language of Nature: An Essay on the Philosophy of Science		Finalist
	John Courtney Murray	The Problem of God, Yesterday and Today		Finalist
	Walter S. Sullivan	We Are Not Alone: The Search for Intelligent Life on Other Worlds		Finalist
1966 [35]	Charles Frankel	"The Love of Anxiety" and Other Essays		Finalist
	Edgar Z. Friedenberg	Coming of Age in America		Finalist
	Bentley Glass	Science and Ethical Values		Finalist
	Alice Kimball Smith	A Peril and a Hope: The Scientists' Movement in America, 1945–47		Finalist
1967 [36]	Oscar Lewis	La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty—San Juan and New York	Culture of poverty, Social theory asserting that value systems perpetuate poverty	Winner
	Howard B. Adelmann	Marcello Malpighi and the Evolution of Embryology	Marcello Malpighi, Italian biologist and physician	Finalist
	George Beadle and Muriel Beadle,	The Language of Life: An Introduction to the Science of Genetics		Finalist
	Wassily W. Leontief	Essays in Economics		Finalist
	Philip Rieff	The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud		Finalist
	Erwin Straus	Phenomenological Psychology: The Selected Papers of Erwin W. Straus	Phenomenological Psychology, Psychological study of subjective experience	Finalist
1968 [38]	Jonathan Kozol	Death at an Early Age		Winner
	Theodosius Dobzhansky	The Biology of Ultimate Concern		Finalist
	John Kenneth Galbraith	The New Industrial State		Finalist
	Suzanne K. Langer	Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling		Finalist
	Lewis Mumford	The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development		Finalist
1969 [39]	Robert Jay Lifton	Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima		Winner
	René Dubos	So Human an Animal: How We Are Shaped by Surroundings and Events		Finalist
	Frank E. Manuel	A Portrait of Isaac Newton	Isaac Newton, English physicist and mathematician (1642–1727)	Finalist
	Karl Menninger, M.D.	The Crime of Punishment		Finalist
	James D. Watson	The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA		Finalist

1970s

Throughout the 1970s, the National Book Award was separated into multiple categories.

Arts and Letters

National Book Award for Nonfiction: Arts and Letters, winners and finalists, 1970-1976

Year	Author	Title	Subject	Result
1970 [43]	Lillian Hellman	An Unfinished Woman: A Memoir	Lillian Hellman, American dramatist and screenwriter (1905–1984)	Winner
	Richard Howard	Alone with America: Essays on the Art of Poetry in the United States Since 1950		Finalist
	Noel Perrin	Dr. Bowdler's Legacy: A History of Expurgated Books in England and America	Expurgated books	Finalist
	John Unterecker	Voyager: A Life of Hart Crane	Hart Crane, American poet	Finalist
	Gore Vidal	Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship		Finalist
1971 [44]	Francis Steegmuller	Cocteau: A Biography	Jean Cocteau, French writer and filmmaker	Winner
	Harold Bloom	Yeats	W. B. Yeats, Irish poet and playwright (1865–1939)	Finalist
	Robert Coles	Erik H. Erikson: the Growth of His Work	Erik Erikson, American German-born psychoanalyst & essayist	Finalist
	Nancy Milford	Zelda	Zelda Fitzgerald, American novelist (1900–1948)	Finalist
	Lewis Mumford	The Myth of the Machine: The Pentagon of Power		Finalist
	Kenneth Rexroth	The Alternative Society: Essays from the Other World		Finalist
1972	Charles Rosen	The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven		Winner
	M. H. Abrams	Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature		Finalist
	James Dickey	Sorties		Finalist
	Thomas R. Edwards	Imagination and Power: A Study of Poetry on Public Themes		Finalist
	Norman Fruman	Coleridge, the Damaged Archangel	Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet, literary critic and philosopher (1772–1834)	Finalist
	César Graña	Fact and Symbol: Essays in the Sociology of Art and Literature		Finalist
	B. H. Haggin	Ballet Chronicle		Finalist
	Nathan Huggins	Harlem Renaissance	Harlem Renaissance , African-American cultural movement in New York City in the 1920s	Finalist
	Iris Origo	Images and Shadows	Iris Origo, British writer, 1902–1988	Finalist
	John Simon	Movies into Films: Film Criticism, 1967–1970		Finalist
1973 [45]	Arthur M. Wilson	Diderot	Denis Diderot, French Enlightenment philosopher, writer and encyclopædist (1713–1784)	Winner
	Leo Braudy	Jean Renoir: The World of His Films	Jean Renoir, French film director and screenwriter (1894–1979)	Finalist
	Arlene Croce	The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book	Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers's musicals	Finalist
	Stanley Fish	Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature		Finalist
	Michael Goldman	Shakespeare and the Energies of Drama	William Shakespeare, English poet, playwright, and actor (1564–1616)	Finalist
	Daniel Hoffman	Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe	Edgar Allan Poe, American writer and literary critic (1809–1849)	Finalist
	Albert Murray	South to a Very Old Place		Finalist
	Linda Nochlin	Realism		Finalist
	Harold Rosenberg	The De-Definition of Art: Action Art to Pop to Earthworks		Finalist
	Leo Steinberg	Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art		Finalist
	Lionel Trilling	Sincerity and Authenticity		Finalist
	Alec Wilder	American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950		Finalist
	Vernon Young	On Film: Unpopular Essays on a Popular Art		Finalist
1974 [46]	Pauline Kael	Deeper Into Movies		Winner
	Daniel Aaron	The Unwritten War: American Writers and the Civil War		Finalist
	W. H. Auden	Forewords and Afterwords		Finalist
	Clarence Brown  [ ru ]	Mandelstam	Osip Mandelstam	Finalist
	Richard Ellmann	Golden Codgers: Biographical Speculations		Finalist
	B. H. Haggin	A Decade of Music		Finalist
	Lillian Hellman	Pentimento: A Book of Portraits	Lillian Hellman	Finalist
	Edward Hoagland	Walking the Dead Diamond River	Dead Diamond River	Finalist
	Lincoln Kirstein	Elie Nadelman	Elie Nadelman	Finalist
	Leonard B. Meyer	Explaining Music: Essays and Explorations		Finalist
	Saul Steinberg	The Inspector		Finalist
	Kevin Starr	Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915		Finalist
1975 [47]	Roger Shattuck	Marcel Proust	Marcel Proust	Winner
	Lewis Thomas	The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher [lower-alpha 3]		Winner
	Calvin Bedient	Eight Contemporary Poets: Charles Tomlinson, Donald Davie, R. S. Thomas, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, Thomas Kinsella, Stevie Smith, W. S. Graham		Finalist
	Alessandra Comini	Egon Schiele's Portraits	Egon Schiele	Finalist
	Peter Gay	Style in History		Finalist
	Richard Gilman	The Making of Modern Drama: A Study of Büchner, Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Pirandello, Brecht, Beckett, Handke		Finalist
	Elizabeth Hardwick	Seduction and Betrayal		Finalist
	Marjorie L. Hoover	Meyerhold: The Art of Conscious Theater	Vsevolod Meyerhold	Finalist
	H. W. Janson	16 Studies	Art History	Finalist
	Eleanor Perényi	Liszt: The Artist as Romantic Hero	Franz Liszt	Finalist
	Oliver Strunk	Essays on Music in the Western World		Finalist
1976 [48]	Paul Fussell	The Great War and Modern Memory		Winner
	Lincoln Kirstein	Njinsky Dancing	Vaslav Nijinsky	Finalist
	Lawrence L. Langer	The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination		Finalist
	Robert Rosenblum	Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko	Romanticism painting	Finalist
	Patricia Meyer Spacks	The Female Imagination		Finalist
	Leo Steinberg	Michelangelo's Last Paintings	Michelangelo	Finalist

History, Biography, and Autobiography

In some years, the History and Biography awards were combined, while in others, they were two separate categories.

National Book Award for Nonfiction: History and Biography, winners and finalists, 1970-1979

Year	Category	Author	Title	Subject	Result
1970 [43]	History and Biography	T. Harry William	Huey Long	Huey Long, American politician from Louisiana (1893–1935)	Winner
		Dean Acheson	Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department	Dean Acheson, American politician and lawyer (1893–1971)	Finalist
		Townsend Hoopes	The Limits of Intervention	Townsend Hoopes, American historian and government official (1922 – 2004)	Finalist
		John Womack	Zapata and the Mexican Revolution	Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary (1879–1919)	Finalist
		Gordon S. Wood	The Creation of the American Republic		Finalist
1971 [44]	History and Biography	James MacGregor Burns	Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom	Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States from 1933 to 1945	Winner [49]
		David Herbert Donald	Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man	Charles Sumner, American abolitionist and statesman (1811–1874)	Finalist
		Andy Logan	Against the Evidence: The Becker-Rosenthal Affair	Rosenthal murder case, Murder of Herman Rosenthal and subsequent trial	Finalist
		Dumas Malone	Jefferson the President: First Term, 1801–1805	Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States from 1801 to 1809	Finalist
		C. L. Sulzberger	The Last of the Giants		Finalist
1972	Biography	Joseph P. Lash	Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship, Based on Eleanor Roosevelt's Private Papers	Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States (1933–1945), diplomat, and activist	Winner
		John Cody	After Great Pain: The Inner Life of Emily Dickinson	Emily Dickinson, American poet (1830–1886)	Finalist
		Emily Farnham	Charles Demuth: Behind A Laughing Mask	Charles Demuth, American painter	Finalist
		David Freeman Hawke	Benjamin Rush: Revolutionary Gadfly	Benjamin Rush, American Founding Father physician, educator, and author (1746–1813)	Finalist
		Ralph Ketcham	James Madison: A Biography	James Madison, President of the United States from 1809 to 1817	Finalist
		Harding Lemay	Inside, Looking Out: A Personal Memoir	Harding Lemay, American screenwriter	Finalist
		D'Arcy McNickle	Indian Man: A Life of Oliver La Farge	Oliver La Farge, American novelist	Finalist
		Ronald Paulson	Hogarth: His Life, Art, and Times	William Hogarth, English artist and social critic (1697–1764)	Finalist
		Lacey Baldwin Smith	Henry VIII: The Mask of Royalty	Henry VIII, King of England from 1509 to 1547	Finalist
		Barbara Tuchman	Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45		Finalist
1972	History	Allan Nevins	The Organized War, 1863–1864 and The Organized War to Victory, 1864–1865		Winner
1973 [45]	Biography	James Thomas Flexner	George Washington: Anguish and Farewell, 1793–1799	George Washington, First president of the United States	Winner
		Ingrid Bengis	Combat in the Erogenous Zone: Writings on Love, Hate, and Sex		Finalist
		Hortense Calisher	Herself	Hortense Calisher, American novelist	Finalist
		Kenneth S. Davis	FDR: The Beckoning of Destiny, 1882–1928	Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States from 1933 to 1945	Finalist
		Leon Edel	Henry James: The Master, 1901–1916	Henry James, American-born British writer and literary critic	Finalist
		Eleanor Flexner	Mary Wollstonecraft: A Biography	Mary Wollstonecraft, English writer and intellectual (1759–1797)	Finalist
		Nikki Giovanni	Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being A Black Poet	Nikki Giovanni, American poet, writer and activist	Finalist
		John Houseman	Run-Through	John Houseman, British-American actor and film producer (1902–1988)	Finalist
		Diane Johnson	Lesser Lives	Mary Ellen Meredith, British novelist and poet of the Victorian era	Finalist
		George F. Kennan	Memoirs, 1950–1963		Finalist
		Joseph P. Lash	Eleanor: The Years Alone	Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States (1933–1945), diplomat, and activist	Finalist
		Margaret Mead	Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years		Finalist
		Peter Štanský and William Abrahams	The Unknown Orwell	George Orwell, English author and journalist (1903–1950)	Finalist
	History	Robert Manson Myers	The Children of Pride: A True Story of Georgia and the Civil War	Charles Colcock Jones, American Presbyterian clergyman, educator, and planter (1804 – 1863)	Winner
		Isaiah Trunk	Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation		Winner
		James David Barber	The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House		Finalist
		John Diggins	Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America		Finalist
		Richard Dunn	Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713		Finalist
		Loren Graham	Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union		Finalist
		David Lovejoy	The Glorious Revolution in America	Dominion of New England, English regional government in North America, 1686–1689	Finalist
		Jerre Mangione	The Dream and the Deal: The Federal Writers Project, 1935–43		Finalist
		Robert O. Paxton	Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944		Finalist
		Edward E. Rice	Mao's Way		Finalist
1974 [46]	Biography	John Leonard Clive	Thomas Babington Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian [lower-alpha 4]	Thomas Babington Macaulay	Winner
		Douglas Day	Malcolm Lowry: A Biography	Malcolm Lowry	Finalist
		J. H. Adamson and H. F. Folland	Sir Harry Vane: His Life and Times (1613–1662)	Henry Vane the Younger	Finalist
		Robert V. Bruce	Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and The Conquest of Solitude	Alexander Graham Bell	Finalist
		Stephen F. Cohen	Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888–1938		Finalist [50]
		Lester G. Crocker	Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Prophetic Voice, Vol. II	Jean-Jacques Rousseau	Finalist
		Myra Friedman	Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin	Janis Joplin	Finalist
		William H. Harbaugh	Lawyer's Lawyer: The Life of John W. Davis	John W. Davis	Finalist
		Townsend Hoopes	The Devil and John Foster Dulles		Finalist
		Louis Sheaffer	O'Neill Volume II: Son and Artist	Eugene O'Neill	Finalist
		Kathryn Kish Sklar	Catherine Beecher	Catherine Beecher	Finalist
		Adam Ulam	Stalin	Joseph Stalin	Finalist
	History	John Leonard Clive	Thomas Babington Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian [lower-alpha 4]	Thomas Babington Macaulay	Winner
		Ray Allen Billington	Frederick Jackson Turner: Historian, Teacher, Scholar	Frederick Jackson Turner	Finalist
		Daniel J. Boorstin	The Americans [lower-alpha 5]		Finalist
		Frank Freidel	Franklin D. Roosevelt [lower-alpha 6]	Franklin D. Roosevelt	Finalist
		Lawrence M. Friedman	A History of American Law		Finalist
		Frederic C. Lane	Venice: Maritime Republic		Finalist
		Edward Pessen	Riches, Class and Power Before the Civil War		Finalist
		Richard Slotkin	Regeneration Through Violence: the Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860		Finalist
		Stephan Thernstrom	The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880–1970		Finalist
		Robert C. Tucker	Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929: A Study in History and Personality		Finalist
1975 [47]	Biography	Richard B. Sewall	The Life of Emily Dickinson	Emily Dickinson	Winner
		Richard Beeman	Patrick Henry: A Biography	Patrick Henry	Finalist
		Michael Collins	Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys		Finalist
		Ben Maddow	Edward Weston: Fifty Years; The Definitive Volume of His Photographic Work	Edward Weston	Finalist
		James R. Mellow	Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company	Gertrude Stein	Finalist
		Francis Steegmuller	"Your Isadora": The Love Story of Isadora Duncan & Gordon Craig	Isadora Duncan and Gordon Craig	Finalist
		Wallace Stegner	The Uneasy Chair: A Biography of Bernard DeVoto	Bernard DeVoto	Finalist
		Richard M. Sudhalter and Philip R. Evans	Bix: Man and Legend	Bix Beiderbecke	Finalist
		Glenn Watkins	Gesualdo: The Man and His Music	Carlo Gesualdo	Finalist
		James A. Weisheipl	Friar Thomas D'Aquino: his life, thought, and work	Thomas Aquinas	Finalist
1975 [47]	History	Bernard Bailyn	The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson		Winner [51]
		Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum	Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft		Finalist
		Robert Brentano	Rome Before Avignon		Finalist
		Shelby Foote	The Civil War: A Narrative		Finalist
		Eugene D. Genovese	Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made		Finalist
		John R. Gillis	Youth and History: Tradition and Change in European Age Relations, 1750–Present		Finalist
		Erich S. Gruen	The Last Generation of the Roman Republic		Finalist
		Christopher H. Johnson	Utopian Communism in France		Finalist
		Gerald H. Meaker	The Revolutionary Left in Spain		Finalist
		Edward Shorter and Charles Tilly	Strikes in France, 1830–1968		Finalist
		Mira Wilkins	The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise		Finalist
		Peter H. Wood	Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion		Finalist
1976 [48]	History and Biography	David Brion Davis	The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823		Winner
		Paul Horgan	Lamy of Santa Fe	Jean Baptiste Lamy	Finalist
		R. W. B. Lewis	Edith Wharton	Edith Wharton	Finalist
		Charles S. Maier	Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany and Italy in the Decade after World War		Finalist
		Edmund S. Morgan	American Slavery, American Freedom		Finalist
		Richard Pipes	Russia Under the Old Regime		Finalist
		Frank R. Rossiter	Charles Ives and His America	Charles Ives	Finalist
		Martin J. Sherwin	A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and its Legacies		Finalist
1977 [52]	Biography and Autobiography	W. A. Swanberg	Norman Thomas: The Last Idealist	Norman Thomas	Winner
		Peter Collier and David Horowitz	The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty		Finalist
		Anaïs Nin	The Diary of Anaïs Nin: Volume VI 1955–1966	Anaïs Nin	Finalist
		B. L. Reid	The Lives of Roger Casement	Roger Casement	Finalist
		E. B. White	Letters of E. B. White	E. B. White	Finalist
	History	Irving Howe	World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made		Winner
		Lawrence Goodwyn	Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America		Finalist [53]
		Linda Gordon	Woman's Body, Woman's Right: The History of Birth Control in America		Finalist
		Richard Kluger	Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality		Finalist
		Joshua C. Taylor	America as Art		Finalist
1978 [54]	Biography and Autobiography	W. Jackson Bate	Samuel Johnson	Samuel Johnson	Winner
		James Atlas	Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet		Finalist
		Will D. Campbell	Brother to a Dragonfly		Finalist
		Will Durant and Ariel Durant	A Dual Autobiography		Finalist
		Frank Vandiver	Black Jack: The Life and Times of John J. Pershing		Finalist
	History	David McCullough	The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870–1914		Winner [55]
		Henry Steele Commager	The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized	Age of Enlightenment	Finalist
		Robert J. Donovan	Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945–48	Harry S. Truman	Finalist
		Joseph Kastner	A Species of Eternity	Natural history in the New World	Finalist
		Fritz Stern	Gold and Iron	Gerson Bleichröder and Otto von Bismarck	Finalist
1979 [56]	Biography and Autobiography	Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.	Robert Kennedy and His Times		Winner
		Donald Hall	Remembering Poets		Finalist
		William Manchester	American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur		Finalist
		William M. Murphy	Prodigal Father: The Life of John Butler Yeats		Finalist
		Phyllis Rose	Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf	Virginia Woolf	Finalist
	History	Richard Beale Davis	Intellectual Life in the Colonial South, 1585–1763		Winner
		Reinhard Bendix	Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule		Finalist
		Gordon A. Craig	Germany, 1866–1945		Finalist
		John H. White, Jr.	The American Railroad Passenger Car		Finalist
		Garry Wills	Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence		Finalist

Philosophy and Religion

National Book Award for Nonfiction: Philosophy and Religion, winners and finalists, 1970-

Year	Author	Title	Subject	Result
1970 [43]	Erik Erikson	Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence		Winner
	Kenneth E. Boulding	Beyond Economics: Essays on Society, Religion, and Ethics		Finalist
	Loren Eiseley	The Unexpected Universe		Finalist
	Rollo May	Love and Will		Finalist
	Theodore Roszak	The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition		Finalist
1971	No award presented
1972	Martin E. Marty	Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America		Winner
1973 [45]	S. E. Ahlstrom	A Religious History of the American People		Winner
	Silvano Arieti, M.D.	The Will to be Human		Finalist
	Germaine Brée	Camus and Sartre	Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre	Finalist
	Arthur Danto	Mysticism and Morality: Oriental Thought and Moral Philosophy		Finalist
	Stanley Cavell	The Senses of Walden	Walden	Finalist
	William A. Christian	Person and God in a Spanish Valley		Finalist
	William Leiss	The Domination of Nature		Finalist
	Theodore Roszak	Where the Wasteland Ends		Finalist
	Morton White	Science and Sentiment in America		Finalist
	Theodore Ziolkowski	Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus		Finalist
1974 [46]	Maurice Natanson	Edmund Husserl: Philosopher of Infinite Tasks	Edmund Husserl	Winner
	Don Browning	Generative Man: Psychoanalytic Perspectives		Finalist
	Harvey Cox	The Seduction of the Spirit: The Use and Misuse of People's Religion		Finalist
	Erich Fromm	The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness		Finalist
	Marjorie Grene	Jean-Paul Sartre	Jean-Paul Sartre	Finalist
	Trent Schroyer	The Critique of Domination: The Origins and Development of Critical Theory	Critical Theory	Finalist
	Laurence Veysey	The Communal Experience: Anarchist and Mystical Counter-Cultures in America	American communes	Finalist
	Frederic Wakeman	History and Will: Philosophical Perspectives of Mao Tse-Tung's Thought	Maoism	Finalist
	Harry Austryn Wolfson	Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, Vol. 1		Finalist
	Larzer Ziff	Puritanism in America: New Culture in a New World	New England Puritan	Finalist
1975 [47]	Robert Nozick	Anarchy, State, and Utopia		Winner
	Ian Barbour	Myths, Models and Paradigms		Finalist
	Leonard E. Barrett	Soul-Force: African Heritage in Afro-American Religion	Afro-American religion	Finalist
	John Murray Cuddihy	The Ordeal of Civility: Freud, Marx, Lévi-Strauss and the Jewish Struggle with Modernity	Modernization of European Jews or shtetl people	Finalist
	Philip Garvin and Julia Welch	Religious America		Finalist
	Guenter Lewy	Religion and Revolution		Finalist
	Barbara Myerhoff	Peyote Hunt: The Sacred Journey of the Huichol Indians	Huichol use of peyote	Finalist
	Jaroslav Pelikan	The Spirit of Eastern Christendom 600–1700	Eastern Christianity	Finalist
	Rosemary Radford Ruether	Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism	Anti-Semitism	Finalist

The Sciences

National Book Award for Nonfiction: The Sciences, winners and finalists, 1971-

Year	Author	Title	Subject	Result
1971	Raymond Phineas Stearns	Science in the British Colonies of America		Winner
	Gustav Eckstein	The Body Has a Head		Finalist
	Victor C. Ferkiss	Technological Man		Finalist
	Ian L. McHarg	Design with Nature	Ecological land-use planning	Finalist
	Theodor Rosebury	Life on Man	Human skin as an ecosystem	Finalist
1972	George L. Small	The Blue Whale		Winner
1973 [45]	George B. Schaller	The Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator-Prey Relations		Winner
	John E. Bardach, John H. Ryther and William O. McLarney	Aquaculture: the farming and husbandry of freshwater and marine organisms	Aquaculture, Farming of aquatic organisms	Finalist
	Herman H. Goldstine	The Computer from Pascal to Von Neumann	History of computing and history of computing hardware	Finalist
	Garrett Hardin	Exploring New Ethics for Survival: The Voyage of the Spaceship Beagle	Lifeboat ethics and bioethics	Finalist
	Morris Kline	Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times		Finalist
	Peter Matthiessen	The Tree Where Man Was Born	East Africa	Finalist
	H. Lewis McKinney	Wallace and Natural Selection	Alfred Russel Wallace	Finalist
	Victor Richards, M.D.,	Cancer: The Wayward Cell; its origins, nature, and treatment	Cancer	Finalist
	Ann Zwinger and Beatrice Willard	Land Above the Trees: A Guide to American Alpine Tundra	Alpine tundra	Finalist
1974 [46]	S. E. Luria	Life: The Unfinished Experiment		Winner
	Jeremy Bernstein	Einstein	Albert Einstein	Finalist
	Theodosius Dobzhansky	Genetic Diversity and Human Equality		Finalist
	Amitai Etzioni	Genetic Fix: The Next Technological Revolution		Finalist
	J. M. Jauch	Are Quanta Real?: A Galilean Dialogue		Finalist
	Ruth Kirk and Louis Kirk	Desert: The American Southwest		Finalist
	Suzanne K. Langer	Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling, Vol. II		Finalist
	George Laycock	Autumn of the Eagle	Bald eagles	Finalist
	Robert I. Levy	Tahitians: Mind and Experience in the Society Islands		Finalist
	William T. Powers	Behavior: The Control of Perception		Finalist
	Edwin S. Shneidman	Deaths of Man		Finalist
1975 [47]	Silvano Arieti	Interpretation of Schizophrenia		Winner
	Lewis Thomas	The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher [lower-alpha 3]		Winner
	Lewis Feuer	Einstein and the Generation of Science		Finalist
	Howard E. Gruber and Paul H. Barrett	Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity		Finalist
	J. L. Heilbron	H. G. J. Moseley: The Life and Letters of an English Physicist, 1887–1915	Henry Moseley	Finalist
	Richard S. Lewis	The Voyages of Apollo: The Exploration of the Moon	Apollo program	Finalist
	John McPhee	The Curve of Binding Energy		Finalist
	Stanley Milgram	Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View		Finalist
	Walter S. Sullivan	Continents in Motion: The New Earth Debate	Plate tectonics	Finalist
	Dorothy B. Vitaliano	Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origins	Geomythology	Finalist

Contemporary Affairs

National Book Award for Nonfiction: Contemporary Affairs, winners and finalists, 1972-

Year	Author	Title	Subject	Result
1972	Stewart Brand (editor)	The Last Whole Earth Catalogue		Winner
1973 [45]	Frances FitzGerald	Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam	Vietnam War, Cold War conflict in Southeast Asia from 1955 to 1975	Finalist
	Michael Barone, Grant Ujifusa and Douglas Matthews	The Almanac of American Politics		Finalist
	Herbert Block	Herblock's State of the Union		Finalist
	Lynn Eden	Crisis in Watertown: The Polarization of an American Community	Watertown, Wisconsin (1967–1969)	Finalist
	David Halberstam	The Best and the Brightest	Vietnam War, Cold War conflict in Southeast Asia from 1955 to 1975	Finalist
	Seymour Hersh			Finalist
	Seymour Hersh	Cover-Up: The Army's Secret Investigation of the Massacre at My Lai 4	My Lai Massacre cover-up	Finalist
	Stanley Karnow	Mao and China: From Revolution to Revolution	Mao Zedong (ounder of the People's Republic of Chinaa) nd China	Finalist
	Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb	The Hidden Injuries of Class	Working-class consciousness	Finalist
	Colin M. Turnbull	The Mountain People	Ik people	Finalist
	Garry Wills	Bare Ruined Choirs: Doubt, Prophecy, and Radical Religion		Finalist
	Garry Wills	Attica: The Official Report of the New York State Special Commission on Attica	Attica Prison riot	Finalist
1974 [46]	Murray Kempton	The Briar Patch: The People of the State of New York versus Lumumba Shakur, et al.	A Black Panthers's trial	Winner
	Peter Davies	The Truth About Kent State: A Challenge to the American Conscience	Kent State shootings	Finalist
	John Kenneth Galbraith	Economics and the Public Purpose		Finalist
	Vivian Gornick	In Search of Ali Mahmoud: An American Woman in Egypt		Finalist
	Walter Karp	Indispensable Enemies: The Politics of Misrule in America		Finalist
	Robert Jay Lifton	Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans—Neither Victims nor Executioners	US Vietnam veterans	Finalist
	Jessica Mitford	Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business		Finalist
	Nora Sayre	Sixties Going on Seventies (Perspectives on the Sixties)	1960s	Finalist
	Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.	The Imperial Presidency		Finalist
	Robert Sherrill	The Saturday Night Special and Other Guns	Personal firearms	Finalist
1975 [47]	Theodore Rosengarten	All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw	Ned Cobb	Winner
	Raoul Berger	Executive Privilege: A Constitutional Myth	U.S. executive privilege	Finalist
	Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward	All the President's Men		Finalist
	Robert Jean Campbell, M.D.	The Chasm: The Life and Death of a Great Experiment in Ghetto Education		Finalist
	Robert Caro,	The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York	Robert Moses	Finalist
	Joe Eszterhas	Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse	Harrisonville shooting	Finalist
	Middleton A. Harris with others (uncredited editor Toni Morrison)	The Black Book	"Printed scrapbook" of American "Negro historical materials"	Finalist
	Andrew Levinson	The Working Class Majority		Finalist
	Robert M. Pirsig	Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values		Finalist
	Franz Schurmann	The Logic of World Power: An Inquiry into the Origins, Currents, and Contradictions of World Politics		Finalist
	Rachel Scott	Muscle and Blood		Finalist
	Studs Terkel	Working		Finalist
1976 [48]	Michael J. Arlen	Passage to Ararat		Winner
	Richard Barnet and Ronald E. Muller	Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations	Multinational corporations	Finalist
	Peter L. Berger	Pyramids of Sacrifice: Political Ethics and Social Change		Finalist
	John Kenneth Galbraith	Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went	Money	Finalist
	W. Eugene Smith and Aileen M. Smith	Minamata	Minamata disease	Finalist
	Tim Wicker	A Time to Die		Finalist
1977 [52]	Bruno Bettelheim	The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales		Winner
	Dorothy Dinnerstein	The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise		Finalist
	Joseph Frank	Dostoyevsky: A Writer in His Time	Fyodor Dostoyevsky	Finalist
	Ada Louise Huxtable	Kicked a Building Lately?		Finalist
	Rufus E. Miles, Jr.	Awakening from the American Dream		Finalist
1978 [54]	Gloria Emerson	Winners and Losers		Winner
	Kai T. Erikson	Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood	Buffalo Creek Flood	Finalist
	Michael Harrington	The Vast Majority		Finalist
	Louise Kapp Howe	Pink Collar Workers	Pink-collar workers	Finalist
	Julian Jaynes	The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind		Finalist
1979 [56]	Peter Matthiessen	The Snow Leopard		Winner
	Kenneth E. Boulding	Stable Peace	Peace science	Finalist
	Ivan Doig	This House of Sky: Landscapes of the Western Wind		Finalist [57]
	Alfred Kazin	New York Jew		Finalist
	Meyer Schapiro	Modern Art: 19th and 20th Centuries		Finalist

1980s

1980-1983

From 1980 to 1983 there were dual awards for hardcover (hc) and paperback (ppb) books in all nonfiction subcategories and some others. Most of the paperback award winners were second and later editions that had been previously eligible in their first editions. Here the first edition publication year is given parenthetically except the calendar year preceding the award is represented by "(new)". ^{[lower-alpha 7]}

In 1980, the "Nonfiction" category included the following genres, each in both paperback and hardcover.

Autobiography and Biography

Year	Category	Author	Title	Subject	Result
1980 [58]	Autobiography Hardcover	Lauren Bacall	Lauren Bacall by Myself		Winner
		Barbara Gordon	I'm Dancing As Fast As I Can	Valium addiction	Finalist
		John Houseman	Front and Center		Finalist
		William Saroyan	Obituaries		Finalist
	Autobiography Paperback	Malcolm Cowley	And I Worked at the Writer's Trade: Chapters of Literary History 1918–1978		Winner
	Biography Hardcover	Edmund Morris	The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt	Theodore Roosevelt	Winner
		Millicent Bell	Marquand: An American Life		Finalist
		Leon Edel	Bloomsbury: A House of Lions		Finalist
		Ernest Samuels	Bernard Berenson: The Making of a Connoisseurk	Bernard Berenson	Finalist
	Biography Paperback	A. Scott Berg	Max Perkins: Editor of Genius	Maxwell Perkins	Winner
		W. Jackson Bate	Samuel Johnson	Samuel Johnson	Finalist
		William Manchester	American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964	Douglas MacArthur	Finalist
		Arthur Schlesinger	Robert Kennedy and His Times		Finalist
1981 [59]	Hardcover	Justin Kaplan	Walt Whitman: A Life	Walt Whitman	Winner [37]
		Robert K. Massie	Peter the Great: His Life and World		Finalist
		James R. Mellow	Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times	Nathaniel Hawthorne	Finalist
		Peter Štanský and William Abrahams	Orwell: The Transformation	George Orwell	Finalist
	Paperback	Deirdre Bair	Samuel Beckett: A Biography	Samuel Beckett	Winner
		E. K. Brown	Willa Cather: A Critical Biography	Willa Cather	Finalist
		Leon Edel	Bloomsbury: A House of Lions		Finalist
		Maureen Howard	Facts of Life		Finalist
		Meryle Secrest	Being Bernard Berenson		Finalist
1982 [60]	Hardcover	David McCullough	Mornings on Horseback	Theodore Roosevelt	Winner [55]
		Gay Wilson Allen	Waldo Emerson: A Biography	Ralph Waldo Emerson	Finalist
		Dumas Malone	Jefferson and His Time: The Sage of Monticello		Finalist
		William S. McFeely	Grant: A Biography	Ulysses S. Grant	Finalist
		Milton Rugoff	The Beechers		Finalist
	Paperback	Ronald Steel	Walter Lippmann and the American Century	Walter Lippmann	Winner
		Joseph P. Lash	Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy		Finalist
		Robert K. Massie	Peter the Great: His Life and World		Finalist
		Ted Morgan	Maugham	W. Somerset Maugham	Finalist
		Ernest Samuels	Bernard Berenson: The Making of a Connoisseur	Bernard Berenson	Finalist
1983 [61]	Hardcover	Judith Thurman	Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller		Winner
		Russell Baker	Growing Up		Finalist
		Robert A. Caro	The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power		Finalist
		Robert J. Donovan	Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1949–1953		Finalist
		Lewis Mumford	Sketches from Life: The Autobiography of Lewis Mumford: The Early Years		Finalist
	Paperback	James R. Mellow	Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times	Nathaniel Hawthorne	Winner
		Dumas Malone	Jefferson and His Time: The Sage of Monticello		Finalist
		Paul Mariani	William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked	William Carlos Williams	Finalist
		William S. McFeely	Grant: A Biography	Ulysses S. Grant	Finalist
		Jean Strouse	Alice James: A Biography	Alice James	Finalist

Current Interest

Year	Category	Author	Title	Subject	Result
1980 [58]	Hardcover	Julia Child	Julia Child and More Company	Julia Child	Winner
		Raymond Lifchez and Barbara Winslow	Design for Independent Living: The Environment and Physically Disabled People		Finalist
		Gay Gaer Luce	Your Second Life: Vitality and Growth in Middle and Later Years from the Experiences of the Sage Program		Finalist
		Nathan Pritikin with Patrick M. McGrady	The Pritikin Program for Diet and Exercise		Finalist
		Robert Ellis Smith	Privacy: How to Protect What's Left of It		Finalist
	Paperback	Christopher Lasch	The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations		Winner
		Frances Wells Burck	Babysense: A Practical and Supportive Guide to Baby Care		Finalist
		Farallones Institute	The Integral Urban House: Self-Reliant Living in the City		Finalist
		Tracy Hotchner	Pregnancy and Childbirth: The Complete Guide for a New Life		Finalist
		Calvin Trillin	Alice, Let's Eat: Further Adventures of a Happy Eater		Finalist

General nonfiction

Year	Category	Author	Title	Subject	Result
1980 [58]	Hardcover	Tom Wolfe	The Right Stuff		Winner
		Frances FitzGerald	America Revised		Finalist
		David Halberstam	The Powers That Be		Finalist
		Frederic Morton	A Nervous Splendor: Vienna, 1888–1889		Finalist
		Thomas Powers	The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA		Finalist
	Paperback	Peter Matthiessen	The Snow Leopard		Winner
		Sissela Bok	Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life		Finalist
		Barry Lopez	Of Wolves and Men		Finalist
1981 [59]	Hardcover	Maxine Hong Kingston	China Men [lower-alpha 8]		Winner
		Malcolm Cowley	The Dream of the Golden Mountains: Remembering the 1930s		Finalist
		John Graves	From a Limestone Ledge		Finalist
		Victor S. Navasky	Naming Names	Hollywood blacklist	Finalist
		Studs Terkel	American Dreams: Lost and Found		Finalist
	Paperback	Jane Kramer	The Last Cowboy: Europeans and The Politics of Memory		Winner
		Joan Didion	The White Album		Finalist
		David Halberstam	The Powers That Be		Finalist
		Dan Morgan	Merchants of Grain: The Power and Profits of the Five Giant Companies at the Center of the World's Food Supply		Finalist
		Paul Theroux	The Old Patagonian Express		Finalist
1982 [60]	Hardcover	Tracy Kidder	The Soul of a New Machine		Winner
		Guy Davenport	The Geography of the Imagination: Forty Essays		Finalist
		James Fallows	National Defense		Finalist
		Janet Malcolm	Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession		Finalist
		Andrea Lee	Russian Journal		Finalist
	Paperback	Victor S. Navasky	Naming Names	Hollywood blacklist	Winner
		Norman Cousins	Anatomy of an Illness As Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing		Finalist
		Edward Hoagland	African Calliope: A Journey to the Sudan		Finalist
		Landon Jones	Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation		Finalist
		Barbara Novak	Nature and Culture: American Landscape Painting, 1825–1875		Finalist
1983 [61]	Hardcover	Fox Butterfield	China: Alive in the Bitter Sea		Winner
		George F. Kennan	The Nuclear Delusion: Soviet-American Relations in the Atomic Age		Finalist
		David McClintock	Indecent Exposure: A True Story of Hollywood and Wall Street	Begelman affair	Finalist
		Jonathan Schell	The Fate of the Earth		Finalist
		Susan Sheehan	Is There No Place on Earth for Me?		Finalist
	Paperback	James Fallows	National Defense		Winner
		Edwin R. Bayley	Joe McCarthy and the Press		Finalist
		Paul Fussell	Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between the Wars		Finalist
		Al Santoli	Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War		Finalist
		Joanna Stratton	Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier		Finalist

General reference

Year	Category	Author	Title	Subject	Result
1980 [58]	Hardcover [62]	Elder Witt (editor)	Congressional Quarterly's Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court		Winner
		Frederic M. Kaplan, Julian M. Sopin, and Stephen Andors (eds.)	Encyclopedia of China Today		Finalist
		Bernard Karpel	Arts in America: A Bibliography		Finalist
		J. Gordon Melton	Encyclopedia of American Religions		Finalist
		Carolyn Sue Peterson and Ann D. Fenton (eds.)	Index to Children's Songs		Finalist
	Paperback	Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh	The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows 1946–Present		Winner
		Cynthia W. Cooke, M.D., and Susan Dworkin	The Ms. Guide to a Woman's Health		Finalist
		Solar Age magazine editors	The Solar Age Resource Book		Finalist
		Stuart Berg Flexner	I Hear America Talking: An Illustrated History of American Words and Phrases		Finalist
		Elisabeth L. Scharlatt (editor)	Kids: Day In and Day Out: a parents' manual

History

Year	Category	Author	Title	Result
1980 [58]	Hardcover	Henry A. Kissinger	The White House Years	Winner
		Robert Dallek	Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945	Finalist
		George F. Kennan	Decline of Bismarck's European Order: Franco-Russian Relations, 1875–1890	Finalist
		Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel	Utopian Thought in the Western World	Finalist
		Telford Taylor	Munich: The Price of Peace	Finalist
	Paperback	Barbara W. Tuchman	A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century	Winner
		James Lincoln Collier	The Making of Jazz: A Comprehensive History	Finalist
		Daniel J. Kevles	The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America	Finalist
		Allen Weinstein	Perjury: The Hiss–Chambers Case	Finalist
		Theodore H. White	In Search of History: A Personal Adventure	Finalist
1981 [59]	Hardcover	John Boswell	Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality	Winner
		James H. Billington	Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith	Finalist
		Steven Ozment	The Age of Reform, 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe	Finalist
		Carl E. Schorske	Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture	Finalist
		Page Smith	The Shaping of America: A People's History of the Young Republic	Finalist
	Paperback	Leon F. Litwack	Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery	Winner
		Richard Drinnon	The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building	Finalist
		A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr.	In the Matter of Color: The Colonial Period	Finalist
		Telford Taylor	Munich: The Price of Peace	Finalist
		Howard Zinn	A People's History of the United States	Finalist
1982 [60]	Hardcover	Peter J. Powell	People of the Sacred Mountain: A History of the Northern Cheyenne Chiefs and Warrior Societies, 1830–1879	Winner
		Ray Huang	1587, a Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline	Finalist
		Donald Neff	Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower Takes America into the Middle East	Finalist
		Russell F. Weigley	Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany, 1944–1945	Finalist
		C. Vann Woodward (editor)	Mary Chestnut's Civil War	Finalist
	Paperback	Robert Wohl	The Generation of 1914	Winner
		Malcolm Cowley	The Dream of the Golden Mountains	Finalist
		Robert Dallek	Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945	Finalist
		Carl N. Degler	At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present	Finalist
		Charles Rembar	The Law of the Land: The Evolution of Our Legal System	Finalist
1983 [61]	Hardcover	Alan Brinkley	Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression	Winner
		Gordon A. Craig	The Germans	Finalist
		Robert Darnton	The Literary Underground of the Old Regime	Finalist
		John Putnam Demos	Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England	Finalist
		William H. McNeill	The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force and Society Since A.D. 1000	Finalist
		Bertram Wyatt-Brown	Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South
	Paperback	Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel	Utopian Thought in the Western World	Winner
		George M. Fredrickson	White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History	Finalist
		Ray Huang	1587, a Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline	Finalist
		John Noble Wilford	The Mapmakers	Finalist

Religion/Inspiration

Year	Category	Author	Title	Subject	Result
1980 [58]	Hardcover	Elaine Pagels	The Gnostic Gospels	Gnostic Gospels	Winner
		Peter L. Berger	The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation		Finalist
		Brevard S. Childs	Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture	Canonical criticism	Finalist
		Peter Kreeft	Love Is Stronger Than Death		Finalist
		Jack B. Rogers and Donald K. McKim	The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach	Biblical authority	Finalist
	Paperback	Sheldon Vanauken	A Severe Mercy		Winner
		Richard Bach	Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah		Finalist
		Catherine Marshall	The Helper	Holy Ghost	Finalist

Science

Year	Category	Author	Title	Result
1980 [58]	Hardcover	Douglas Hofstadter	Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid	Winner
		Freeman Dyson	Disturbing the Universe	Finalist
		Douglas Faulkner and Richard Chesher	Living Corals	Finalist
		Bernd Heinrich	Bumblebee Economics	Finalist
		Horace Freeland Judson	The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology	Finalist
	Paperback	Gary Zukav	The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics	Winner
		William J. Kaufmann	Black Holes and Warped Spacetime	Finalist
		Thomas S. Kuhn	The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change	Finalist
		Anne W. Simon	The Thin Edge: Coast and Man in Crisis	Finalist
1981 [59]	Hardcover	Stephen Jay Gould	The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections on Natural History	Winner
		Claude C. Albritton	The Abyss of Time: Changing Conceptions of the Earth's Antiquity after the Sixteenth Century	Finalist
		René Dubos	The Wooing of Earth	Finalist
		Timothy Ferris	Galaxies	Finalist
		Carl Sagan	Cosmos	Finalist
	Paperback	Lewis Thomas	The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher	Winner
		Carl Sagan	Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science	Finalist
		Joseph Silk	The Big Bang: The Creation and Evolution of the Universe	Finalist
		Walter Sullivan	Black Holes: the Edge of the Space, the End of Time	Finalist
1982 [60]	Hardcover	Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey	Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind	Winner
		Gene Bylinsky	Life in Darwin's Universe: Evolution and the Cosmos	Finalist
		Eric Chaisson	Cosmic Dawn: The Origins of Matter and Life	Finalist
		Steven J. Gould	The Mismeasure of Man	Finalist
		Steven M. Stanley	The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes and the Origin of Species	Finalist
	Paperback	Fred Alan Wolf	Taking the Quantum Leap: The New Physics for Nonscientists	Winner
		Freeman Dyson	Disturbing the Universe	Finalist
		Howard E. Gruber	Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity	Finalist
		Bernd Heinrich	Bumblebee Economics	Finalist
		Guy Murchie	The Seven Mysteries of Life: An Exploration in Science & Philosophy	Finalist
1983 [61]	Hardcover	Abraham Pais	"Subtle is the Lord ...": The Science and Life of Albert Einstein	Winner
		Philip J. Hilts	Scientific Temperaments: Three Lives in Contemporary Science	Finalist
		Melvin Konner	The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit	Finalist
		Ernst Mayr	The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance	Finalist
		Heinz R. Pagels	Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature	Finalist
	Paperback	Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh	The Mathematical Experience	Finalist
		Morris Kline	Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty	Finalist
		Cynthia Moss	Portrait in the Wild: Animal Behavior in the Western World	Finalist
		Berton Roueché	The Medical Detectives	Finalist
		G. Ledyard Stebbins	Darwin to DNA: Molecules to Humanity (new)

1983/1984

1983 entries were published during 1982, the pattern established for 1949 books in 1950. Winners in 27 categories were announced April 13 and privately celebrated April 28, 1983.^{[ citation needed ]}

The awards practically went out of business that spring. Their salvation with a reduced program to be determined was announced in November. The revamp was completed only next summer, with an autumn program recognizing books published during the award year (initially, preceding November to current October). There were no awards for books published in 1983 before November.

By this time the awards were sponsored by the book publishers alone. From 1980 (for 1979 books) they were termed "American Book Awards", and the National Book Awards were considered to have been discontinued after 1979.^{[ citation needed ]}

1984 entries for the "revamped" awards in merely three categories were published November 1983 to October 1984; that is, approximately during the award year. Eleven finalists were announced October 17. ^[7] Winners were announced and celebrated November 15, 1984. ^[63]

1984-1989

National Book Award for Nonfiction winners and finalists, 1984-1989

Year	Author	Title	Subject	Result	Ref.
1984	Robert V. Remini	Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833–1845	Andrew Jackson, President of the United States from 1829 to 1837	Winner	[64]
	Howard M. Feinstein	Becoming William James	William James, American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist (1842–1910)	Finalist
	Richard Marius	Thomas More: A Biography	Thomas More, English statesman and philosopher (1478–1535)	Finalist
	Ernst Pawel	The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka	Franz Kafka, Bohemian writer from Prague (1883–1924)	Finalist
	Eudora Welty	One Writer's Beginnings	Eudora Welty, American short story writer, novelist and photographer	Finalist
1985	J. Anthony Lukas	Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families		Winner	[65]
	Daniel J. Kevles	In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Use of Human Heredity		Finalist
	Walter A. McDougall	...the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age		Finalist
1986	Barry Lopez	Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape		Winner	[66] [67]
	John W. Dower	War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War		Finalist
	Richard Kluger	The Paper: The Life and Times of the New York Herald Tribune	New York Herald Tribune , Defunct American newspaper published in New York City	Finalist
	Michael S. Reynolds	The Young Hemingway	Ernest Hemingway, American author and journalist (1899–1961)	Finalist
	Theodore Rosengarten	Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter		Finalist
1987	Richard Rhodes	The Making of the Atomic Bomb		Winner	[68]
	David Herbert Donald	Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe	Thomas Wolfe, American novelist	Finalist
	James Gleick	Chaos: Making a New Science		Finalist
	Claudia Koonz	Mothers in the Fatherland		Finalist
	Robert A.M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin, and Thomas Mellins	New York 1930: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Two World Wars		Finalist
1988	Neil Sheehan	A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam	John Paul Vann, Lieutenant colonel in the United States Army, known for his role in the Vietnam War (1924 – 1972)	Winner	[69]
	Eric Foner	Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877	Reconstruction era in the United States	Finalist
	Peter Gay	Freud: A Life for Our Time	Sigmund Freud, Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis (1856–1939) [lower-alpha 9]	Finalist
	Brenda Maddox	Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom	Molly Bloom, Fictional character, wife of the main protagonist in Ulysses	Finalist
	Jack McLaughlin	Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Builder	Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States from 1801 to 1809, and Monticello, the primary residence of U.S. president Thomas Jefferson	Finalist
1989	Thomas L. Friedman	From Beirut to Jerusalem		Winner	[70]
	Taylor Branch	Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63		Finalist
	McGeorge Bundy	Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years		Finalist
	William Pfaff	Barbarian Sentiments: How the American Century Ends		Finalist
	Marilynne Robinson	Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State and Nuclear Pollution		Finalist

1990s

National Book Award for Nonfiction winners and finalists, 1990-1999

Year	Author	Title	Subject	Result	Ref.
1990	Ron Chernow	The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance		Winner	[71]
	Samuel G. Freedman	Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students and Their High School		Finalist
	Roger Morris	Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician	Richard Nixon, President of the United States from 1969 to 1974	Finalist
	Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith	Jackson Pollock: An American Saga [	Jackson Pollock, American abstract painter (1912–1956)	Finalist
	T.H. Watkins	Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1847–1952	Harold L. Ickes, American politician (1874–1952)	Finalist
1991	Orlando Patterson	Freedom, Vol. 1: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture		Winner	[72]
	E.J. Dionne, Jr.	Why Americans Hate Politics		Finalist
	Melissa Fay Greene	Praying for Sheetrock		Finalist
	R.W.B. Lewis	The Jameses: A Family Narrative	Henry James, American-born British writer and literary critic, and William James, American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist (1842–1910)	Finalist
	Diane Wood Middlebrook	Anne Sexton: A Biography	Anne Sexton, American poet (1928–1974)	Finalist
1992	Paul Monette	Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story	Paul Monette, American author, poet, and activist (1945 – 1995)	Winner	[73]
	Edward L. Ayers	The Promise of the New South		Finalist
	James Gleick	Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman	Richard Feynman, American theoretical physicist (1918–1988)	Finalist
	David McCullough	Truman	Harry S. Truman, President of the United States from 1945 to 1953	Finalist
	Garry Wills	Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America	Gettysburg Address, Speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln	Finalist
1993	Gore Vidal	United States: Essays 1952–1992		Winner	[74]
	William Leach	Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture		Finalist
	David Levering Lewis	W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919	W. E. B. Du Bois, American sociologist, historian, socialist, activist, and writer	Finalist
	Richard Slotkin	Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America		Finalist
	Peter Svenson	Battlefield: Farming a Civil War Battleground		Finalist
1994	Sherwin B. Nuland	How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter		Winner	[75]
	John Putnam Demos	The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America		Finalist
	Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson	Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas	Clarence Thomas, US Supreme Court justice since 1991	Finalist
	John Edgar Wideman	Fatheralong: A Meditation on Fathers, Sons, Race and Society		Finalist
	Tobias Wolff	In Pharoah's Army: Memories of the Lost War	Tobias Wolff, American writer and educator	Finalist
1995	Tina Rosenberg	The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism		Winner	[76]
	Dennis Covington	Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia		Finalist
	Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life			Finalist
	Jonathan Harr	A Civil Action	Anderson v. Cryovac, 1986 US federal lawsuit concerning toxic contamination of groundwater	Finalist
	Maryanne Vollers	Ghosts of Mississippi		Finalist
1996	James P. Carroll	An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War that Came Between Us		Winner	[77]
	Melissa Fay Greene	The Temple Bombing		Finalist
	Paul Hendrickson	The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War	Robert McNamara, American businessman and Secretary of Defense	Finalist
	Cary Reich	The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller: Worlds to Conquer, 1908–1958	Nelson Rockefeller, Vice president of the United States from 1974 to 1977	Finalist
	Anne Roiphe	Fruitful: A Real Mother in the Modern World		Finalist
1997	Joseph J. Ellis	American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson	Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States from 1801 to 1809	Finalist	[78]
	David I. Kertzer	The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara	Edgardo Mortara	Winner
	Jamaica Kincaid	My Brother		Finalist
	Thomas Lynch	The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade	Funeral directors, Professionals involved in the business of funeral rites	Finalist
	Sam Tanenhaus	Whittaker Chambers: A Biography	Whittaker Chambers, Defected communist spy, writer, editor (1901–1961)	Finalist
1998	Edward Ball	Slaves in the Family		Winner	[79]
	Harold Bloom	Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human	William Shakespeare, English poet, playwright, and actor (1564–1616)	Finalist
	Yaffa Eliach	There Once Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok	Jewish Eishyshok	Finalist
	Beth Kephart	A Slant of Sun: One Child's Courage		Finalist
	Henry Mayer	All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery	William Lloyd Garrison, American journalist and abolitionist (1805–1879)	Finalist
1999	John W. Dower	Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II		Winner	[80]
	Natalie Angier	Woman: An Intimate Geography		Finalist
	Mark Bowden	Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War		Finalist
	John Phillip Santos	Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation	John Phillip Santos, American freelance filmmaker, producer, journalist, author	Finalist
	Judith Thurman	Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette	Colette, French novelist	Finalist

2000s

National Book Award for Nonfiction winners and finalists, 2000-2009

Year	Author	Title	Subject	Result	Ref.
2000	Nathaniel Philbrick	In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex	Whaleship Essex, American whaleship from Nantucket, Massachusetts	Winner	[81] [82]
	Jacques Barzun	From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present		Finalist
	Alice Kaplan	The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach	Robert Brasillach, French writer and journalist	Finalist
	David Levering Lewis	W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963	W.E.B. Du Bois, American sociologist, historian, socialist, activist, and writer	Finalist
	Patrick Tierney [lower-alpha 10]	Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon		Finalist
2001	Andrew Solomon	The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression		Winner	[84] [85]
	Marie Arana	American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood		Finalist
	Nina Bernstein	The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care		Finalist
	David James Duncan	My Story as Told by Water		Finalist
	Jan T. Gross	Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland		Finalist
2002	Robert A. Caro	Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson	Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States from 1963 to 1969	Winner	[86]
	Devra Davis	When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution	1948 Donora smog, Major Pennsylvania air pollution incident	Finalist
	Atul Gawande	Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science		Finalist
	Elizabeth Gilbert	The Last American Man	Eustace Conway	Finalist
	Steve Olson	Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past through Our Genes		Finalist
2003	Carlos Eire	Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy		Winner	[87]
	Anne Applebaum	Gulag: A History		Finalist
	George Howe Colt	The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home		Finalist
	John D'Emilio	Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin	Bayard Rustin, American civil rights activist (1912–1987)	Finalist
	Erik Larson	The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America		Finalist
2004	Kevin Boyle	Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age		Winner	[88]
	David Hackett Fischer	Washington's Crossing		Finalist
	Jennifer Gonnerman	Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett		Finalist
	Stephen Greenblatt	Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare	William Shakespeare, English poet, playwright, and actor (1564–1616)	Finalist
	9/11 Commission	9/11 Commission Report	The 9/11 Commission's final report on the September 11 attacks	Finalist
2005	Joan Didion	The Year of Magical Thinking	Joan Didion, American writer (1934–2021)	Winner	[89]
	Alan Burdick	Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion		Finalist
	Leo Damrosch	Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius	Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer (1712–1778)	Finalist
	Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn	102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers	September 11 attacks, 2001 Islamist terrorist attacks in the United States	Finalist
	Adam Hochschild	Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves		Finalist
2006	Timothy Egan	The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl		Winner	[90] [91]
	Taylor Branch	At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68		Finalist
	Rajiv Chandrasekaran	Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone	Iraq's Green Zone, Area in Baghdad, Iraq	Finalist
	Peter Hessler	Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present		Finalist
	Lawrence Wright	The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11	Al-Qaeda, Salafi jihadist organization founded in 1988	Finalist
2007	Tim Weiner	Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA	Central Intelligence Agency, National intelligence agency of the United States	Winner	[92]
	Edwidge Danticat	Brother, I'm Dying	Edwidge Danticat, Haitian-American writer	Finalist
	Christopher Hitchens	God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything		Finalist
	Woody Holton	Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution		Finalist
	Arnold Rampersad	Ralph Ellison: A Biography	Ralph Ellison, American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer (1913–1994)	Finalist
2008	Annette Gordon-Reed	The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family		Winner	[93]
	Drew Gilpin Faust	This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War	American Civil War, 1861–1865 conflict in the United States	Finalist
	Jane Mayer	The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals	War on terror, Ongoing international military campaign following the September 11 attacks	Finalist
	Jim Sheeler	Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives		Finalist
	Joan Wickersham	The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order		Finalist
2009	T. J. Stiles	The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt	Cornelius Vanderbilt, American businessman and tycoon (1794–1877)	Winner	[94]
	David M. Carroll	Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook		Finalist
	Sean B. Carroll	Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species		Finalist
	Greg Grandin	Fordlândia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City	Fordlândia, Village in Pará, Brazil	Finalist
	Adrienne Mayor	The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy	Mithradates, King of Pontus from 120 to 63 BC	Finalist

2010s

National Book Award for Nonfiction winners and finalists, 2010-2019

Year	Author	Title	Subject	Result	Ref.
2010	Patti Smith	Just Kids	Patti Smith, American singer, songwriter, author and poet	Winner	[95]
	Barbara Demick	Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea	North Korea, Country in East Asia	Finalist
	John W. Dower	Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq		Finalist
	Justin Spring	Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade	Samuel Steward, American poet, novelist, tattoo artist	Finalist
	Megan K. Stack	Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War		Finalist
2011	Stephen Greenblatt	The Swerve: How the World Became Modern		Winner	[96] [97]
	Deborah Baker	The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism	Maryam Jameelah, American writer	Finalist
	Mary Gabriel	Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution	Karl Marx, German philosopher (1818–1883), and Jenny von Westphalen, German theatre critic and political activist	Finalist
	Manning Marable	Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention	Malcolm X, African-American human rights activist (1925–1965)	Finalist
	Lauren Redniss	Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love & Fallout	Marie Curie, Polish-French physicist and chemist (1867–1934), and Pierre Curie, French physicist (1859–1906)	Finalist	[98]
2012	Katherine Boo	Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity	Mumbai, Capital of Maharashtra, India	Winner	[99] [100] [101] [102]
	Anne Applebaum	Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945–1956		Finalist
	Robert A. Caro	The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson	Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States from 1963 to 1969	Finalist
	Domingo Martinez	The Boy Kings of Texas		Finalist	[103]
	Anthony Shadid	House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East	Anthony Shadid, American journalist	Finalist
2013	George Packer	The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America		Winner	[104] [105] [106]
	Jill Lepore	Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin	Jane Franklin Mecom, 18th-century American and sister of Benjamin Franklin	Finalist
	Wendy Lower	Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields		Finalist
	Alan Taylor	The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832		Finalist
	Lawrence Wright	Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief		Finalist
2014	Evan Osnos	Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China		Winner	[107] [108]
	Roz Chast	Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?		Finalist
	Anand Gopal	No Good Men Among The Living		Finalist
	John Lahr	Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh	Tennessee Williams, American playwright (1911–1983)	Finalist
	E.O. Wilson	The Meaning of Human Existence		Finalist
2015	Ta-Nehisi Coates	Between the World and Me		Winner	[109] [110]
	Sally Mann	Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs		Finalist
	Sy Montgomery	The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness		Finalist
	Carla Power	If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran		Finalist
	Tracy K. Smith	Ordinary Light: A Memoir	Tracy K. Smith, American poet	Finalist
2016	Ibram X. Kendi	Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America		Winner	[111] [112]
	Arlie Russell Hochschild	Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right		Finalist	[113]
	Viet Thanh Nguyen	Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War		Finalist	[113]
	Andrés Reséndez	The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America		Finalist	[113]
	Heather Ann Thompson	Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy	Attica Prison riot, 1971 prisoner rebellion, Attica, New York prison	Finalist	[113]
2017	Masha Gessen	The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia		Winner	[114] [115]
	Erica Armstrong Dunbar	Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge		Finalist
	Frances FitzGerald	The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America		Finalist
	David Grann	Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI	Osage Indian murders, Series of murders of Osage Indians in Osage County, Oklahoma	Finalist
	Nancy MacLean	Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America		Finalist
2018	Jeffrey C. Stewart	The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke	Alain LeRoy Locke, American philosopher and writer (1885–1954)	Winner	[116] [117]
	Colin G. Calloway	The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation		Finalist
	Victoria Johnson	American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic	David Hosack, American physician, botanist, and educator (1769-1835)	Finalist
	Sarah Smarsh	Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth		Finalist
	Adam Winkler	We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights	Corporate personhood and the rights of corporations under the U.S. Constitution	Finalist
2019	Sarah M. Broom	The Yellow House		Winner	[118]
	Tressie McMillan Cottom	Thick: And Other Essays		Finalist
	Carolyn Forché	What You Have Heard is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance		Finalist
	David Treuer	The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present		Finalist
	Albert Woodfox with Leslie George	Solitary	Solitary confinement, Strict imprisonment form	Finalist	[119]

2020s

National Book Award for Nonfiction winners and finalists, 2020-2029

Year	Author	Title	Subject	Result	Ref.
2020	Les Payne and Tamara Payne	The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X	Malcolm X, African-American human rights activist (1925–1965)	Winner	[120]
	Claudio Saunt	Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory		Finalist
	Jenn Shapland	My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir		Finalist
	Karla Cornejo Villavicencio	The Undocumented Americans		Finalist
	Jerald Walker	How To Make a Slave and Other Essays		Finalist
2021	Tiya Miles	All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake	Ashley’s Sack, a mid-1800s cloth sack embroidered with account of a slave sale of a 9-year-old girl	Winner	[121] [122]
	Hanif Abdurraqib	A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance		Finalist
	Lucas Bessire	Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains		Finalist
	Grace M Cho	Tastes Like War: A Memoir		Finalist
	Nicole Eustace	Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America		Finalist
2022	Imani Perry	South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon To Understand the Soul of a Nation		Winner	[123] [124]
	Meghan O’Rourke	The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness		Finalist	[83]
	David Quammen	Breathless: The Scientific Race To Defeat a Deadly Virus		Finalist	[83]
	Ingrid Rojas Contreras	The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir		Finalist	[83]
	Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa	His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice	George Floyd, African-American man murdered by a police officer (1973–2020)	Finalist	[83]
2023	Ned Blackhawk	The Rediscovery of America: Native peoples and the unmaking of US history		Winner	[125]
	Cristina Rivera Garza	Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A sister’s search for justice		Finalist	[126]
	Christina Sharpe	Ordinary Notes
	Raja Shehadeh	We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian memoir
	John Vaillant	Fire Weather: A true story from a hotter world

Repeat winners

See also Winners of multiple U.S. National Book Awards

Three books have won two literary National Book Awards (that is, excluding graphics), all in nonfiction subcategories of 1964 to 1983.

• John Clive, Thomas Babington Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian

1974 Biography; 1974 History

• Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

1979 Contemporary Thought; 1980 General Nonfiction, Paperback

• Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

1975 Arts and Letters; 1975 Science

Matthiessen and Thomas won three Awards (as did Saul Bellow, all fiction). Matthiessen won the 2008 fiction award. Thomas is one of several authors of two Award-winning books in nonfiction categories.

• Justin Kaplan, 1961, 1981 (Arts and Letters, Biography/Autobiography)
• George F. Kennan, 1957, 1968 (Nonfiction, History and Biography)
• Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1936, 1939 (Non-Fiction, Non-Fiction)
• David McCullough, 1978, 1982 (History, Autobiography/Biography)
• Arthur Schlesinger, 1966, 1979 (History and Biography, Biography and Autobiography)
• Frances Steegmuller, 1971, 1981 (Arts and Letters, Translation)
• Lewis Thomas, 1975, 1981 (Arts and Letters and Science, Science)

See also

• List of winners of the National Book Award, winners only.

Notes

1. Beginning 2005, the official annual webpages (see References) provide more information: the panelists in each award category, the publisher of each finalist, some audio-visual interviews with authors, etc. For 1996 to date, annual webpages generally provide transcripts of acceptance speeches by winning authors.
2. The other three of four runners-up listed in New York Times coverage of the awards for 1937 were works of fiction, and Nonfiction was one of four award categories, so it is likely to call Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living runner up for the Nonfiction award.
   • That is not certain, for it does not match the NYT order of listing and mis-classification is possible. NYT lists four "close seconds" in order Conrad Richter, Sea of Grass ; Kenneth Roberts, Northwest Passage ; Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living; [Leo Rosten], The Education of Hyman Kaplan. Meanwhile, the four winners are identified by award category and listed in order Fiction, Nonfiction, Bookseller Discovery, Most Original. Both Sea of Grass and Northwest Passage are historical novels, which does not fit the second-listed category Nonfiction.The Importance of Living is nonfiction and also consistent with the third-listed winner, Bookseller Discovery. Hyman Kaplan is fiction and also consistent with the fourth-listed winner, Most Original.
3. Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell, won both the Arts & Letters and Science awards in 1975.
4. In 1974 John Clive, Thomas Babington Macaulay, won both the History and Biography awards.
5. Boorstin published the third and final volume of The Americans in 1973 (The Americans: The Democratic Experience).
6. Freidel published the fourth and final folume of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1973 (ending 1934).
7. "(new)" implies that the book was not previously eligible for a National Book Award. It does not imply a paperback original or first publication in simultaneous hard and paper editions. There may have been a first hardcover edition earlier and award-winning paperback edition later in the calendar year. • No book was a finalist for hardcover and paperback awards in the same year.
8. Wikipedia puts the book in genres "short-story cycle; historical fiction" and calls it a novel in her biography.
9. The National Book Foundation website mistakenly lists Peter Gay's The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. Gay won the 1967 Award in History and Biography for the first volume of that work, subtitled The Rise of Modern Paganism. The second and third volumes were published in 1969 (The Science of Freedom) and 1973 (A Comprehensive Anthology).
10. Patrick Tierney's book was later determined to be deliberately fraudulent. ^{[83] [55]}

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