Awards for nonfiction were made from 1950-1964; the category was then split up into sub-fields from 1965-1983. A unified nonfiction award was re-introduced in 1984. The awards for the various sub-fields will be found on separate pages.
For more information about the National Book Award, click here.
2018 The new Negro : the life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C. Stewart
2017 The future is history : how totalitarianism reclaimed Russia by Paula J. Giddings
2016 Stamped from the beginning : the definitive history of racist ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
2015 Between the world and me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
2014 Age of ambition : chasing fortune, truth, and faith in the new China by Evan Osnos
2013 The unwinding : an inner history of the new America by George Packer
2012 Behind the beautiful forevers by Katherine Boo
2011 The swerve : how the world became modern by Stephen Greenblatt
2010 Just kids by Patti Smith
2009 The first tycoon : the epic life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T. J. Stiles
2008 The Hemingses of Monticello : an American family by Annette Gordon-Reed
2007 Legacy of ashes : the history of the CIA by Tim Weiner
2006 The worst hard time : the untold story of those who survived the great American dust bowl by Timothy Egan
2005 The year of magical thinking by Joan Didion
2004 Arc of justice : a saga of race, civil rights, and murder in the Jazz Age by Kevin Boyle
2003 Waiting for snow in Havana : confessions of a Cuban boy by Carlos Eire
2002 The years of Lyndon Johnson, volume 3 : master of the senate by Robert Caro
2001 The noonday demon : an atlas of depression by Andrew Solomon
2000 In the heart of the sea : the tragedy of the whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
1999 Embracing defeat : Japan in the wake of World War II by John W. Dower
1998 Slaves in the family by Edward Ball
1997 American sphinx : the character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph J. Ellis
1996 An American requiem : God, my father, and the war that came between us by James Carroll
1995 The haunted land : facing Europe's ghosts after communism by Tina Rosenberg
1994 How we die : reflections on life's final chapter by Sherwin B. Nuland
1993 United States : essays : 1952-1992 by Gore Vidal
1992 Becoming a man : half a life story by Paul Monette
1991 Freedom by Orlando Patterson
1990 The house of Morgan : an American banking dynasty and the rise of modern finance by Ron Chernow
1989 From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas L. Friedman
1988 A bright shining lie : John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan
1987 The making of the atomic bomb by Richard Rhodes
1986 Arctic dreams : imagination and desire in a northern landscape by Barry Lopez
1985 Common ground : a turbulent decade in the lives of three American families by J. Anthony Lukas
1984 Andrew Jackson and the course of American democracy, 1833-1845 by Robert V. Remini
1963 Henry James, volume 2 : the conquest of London, 1870-1881; Henry James, volume 3 : the middle years, 1882-1895 by Leon Edel
1962 The city in history : its origins, its transformations, and its prospects by Lewis Mumford
1961 The rise and fall of the Third Reich : a history of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer
1960 James Joyce by Richard Ellmann
1959 Mistress to an age; a life of Madame de Staël by J. Christopher Herold
1958 The lion and the throne; the life and times of Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634) by Catherine Drinker Bowen
1957 Soviet-American relations, 1917-1920, volume 1 : Russia leaves the war by George F. Kennan
1956 American in Italy by Herbert Kubly
1955 The measure of man; on freedom, human values, survival, and the modern temper by Joseph Wood Krutch
1954 A stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton
1953 The course of empire by Bernard A. De Voto
1952 The sea around us by Rachel Carson
1951 Herman Melville by Newton Arvin
1950 The life of Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph L. Rusk