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1983     Isak Dinesen : the life of a storyteller by Judith Thurman (Autobiography/Biography, hardcover)
            Nathaniel Hawthorne in his times by James R. Mellow (Autobiography/Biography, paperback)
            Voices of protest : Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression by Alan Brinkley (History, hardcover)
            Utopian thought in the Western World by Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel (History, paperback)
1982     Mornings on horseback by David McCullough (Autobiography/Biography, hardcover)
            Walter Lippmann and the American century by Ronald Steel (Autobiography/Biography, paperback)
            People of the sacred mountain : a history of the northern Cheyenne chiefs and warrior societies, 1830-1879 : with an epilogue, 1969-1974 by Peter John Powell (History, hardcover)
The generation of 1914 by Robert Wohl (History, paperback)
1981     Walt Whitman, a life by Justin Kaplan (Autobiography/Biography, hardcover)
            Samuel Beckett : a biography by Deirdre Bair (Autobiography/Biography, paperback)
            Christianity, social tolerance, and homosexuality : gay people in Western Europe from the beginning of the Christian era to the fourteenth century by John Boswell (History, hardcover)
            Been in the storm so long : the aftermath of slavery by Leon F. Litwack (History, paperback)
1980     Lauren Bacall by myself by Lauren Bacall (Autobiography, hardcover) (revised edition here)
            And I worked at the writer's trade : chapters of literary history, 1918-1978 by Malcolm Cowley (Autobiography, paperback)
            The rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (Biography, hardcover)
            Max Perkins, editor of genius by A. Scott Berg (Biography, paperback)
            White House years by Henry Kissinger (History, hardcover)
            A distant mirror : the calamitous 14th century by Barbara W. Tuchman (History, paperback)
1979     Robert Kennedy and his times by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (Biography and Autobiography); Intellectual life in the Colonial South, 1585-1763 by Richard Beale Davis (History)
1978     Samuel Johnson by W. Jackson Bate (Biography and Autobiography); The path between the seas : the creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 by David McCullough (History)
1977     Norman Thomas, the last idealist by W. A. Swanberg (Biography and Autobiography); World of our fathers by Irving Howe, with the assistance of Kenneth Libo
1976     The problem of slavery in the age of Revolution, 1770-1823 by David Brion Davis (History and Biography)
1975     The life of Emily Dickinson by Richard B. Sewall (Biography); The ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson by Bernard Bailyn (History)
1974     Macaulay: the shaping of the historian by John Clive (History and Biography)
1973     George Washington : anguish and farewell (1793-1799) by James Thomas Flexner (Biography); The children of pride : a true story of Georgia and the Civil War. Edited by Robert Manson Myers (History); Judenrat: the Jewish councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi occupation by Isaiah Trunk (History)
1972     Eleanor and Franklin : the story of their relationship, based on Eleanor Roosevelt's private papers by Joseph P. Lash (Biography); Ordeal of the Union, volume 7 : the organized war, 1863-1864 and volume 8 : the organized war to victory, 1864-1865 by Allan Nevins (History)

Separate National Book Awards for History and for Biography began in 1972.  These awards ended in 1983, to be replaced by awards for nonfiction.

1971     Roosevelt : the soldier of freedom by James MacGregor Burns
1970     Huey Long by T. Harry Williams
1969     White over black: American attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 by Winthrop D. Jordan
1968     Memoirs, volume 1 : 1925-1950 by George F. Kennan
1967     The Enlightenment : an interpretation, volume 1 : the rise of modern paganism by Peter Gay
1966     A thousand days : John F. Kennedy in the White House by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
1965     The life of Lenin by Louis Fischer
1964     The rise of the West; a history of the human community by William H. McNeill