For more information about the The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction (formerly, the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction), click here.

Winners of the prize are listed first, followed by the shortlist.

2017
How to survive a plague : the story of how activists and scientists tamed AIDS by David France
The Islamic enlightenment : the modern struggle between faith and reason by Christopher de Bellaigue
Border : a journey to the edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova
An odyssey : a father, a son and an epic by Daniel Mendelsohn
To be a machine : adventures among cyborgs, utopians, hackers, and the futurists solving the modest problem of death by Mark O'Connell
Belonging : the story of the Jews, 1492-1900 by Simon Schama

2016
East West Street : on the origins of "genocide" and "crimes against humanity" by Philippe Sands
Secondhand time : the last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich ; translated by Bela Shayevich
Negroland : a memoir by Margo Jefferson
The return : fathers, sons, and the land in between by Hisham Matar

2015
Neurotribes : the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity by Steve Silberman
Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane
Ted Hughes : the unauthorised life by Jonathan Bate
The four-dimensional human : ways of being in the digital world by Laurence Scott
The unravelling : high hopes and missed opportunities in Iraq by Emma Sky
This divided island : stories from the Sri Lankan war by Samanth Subramanian

2014
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
The empire of necessity : slavery, freedom, and deception in the new world by Greg Grandin
Village of secrets : defying the Nazis in Vichy France by Caroline Moorehead
Roy Jenkins by John Campbell
Common people by Alison Light
The iceberg : a memoir by Marion Coutts

2013
The Pike : Gabriele d'Annunzio : poet, seducer and preacher of war by Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Empires of the dead : how one man's vision led to the creation of WW1's war graves by David Crane
The return of a king : the battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42 by William Dalrymple
A sting in the tale : my adventures with bumblebees by Dave Goulson
Under another sky : the Romans in Britain by Charlotte Higgins
Margaret Thatcher : the authorized biography : volume 1 : Not for turning by Charles Moore (American edition here)

2012
Into the silence : the Great War, Mallory, and the conquest of Everest by Wade Davis
Behind the beautiful forevers by Katherine Boo
The old ways : a journey on foot by Robert MacFarlane
The better angels of our nature : why violence has declined by Steven Pinker
The Spanish holocaust : inquisition and extermination in twentieth-century Spain by Paul Preston
Strindberg : a life by Sue Prideaux

2011
Mao's great famine : the history of China's most devastating catastrophe, 1958-62 by Frank Dikötter
Caravaggio : a life sacred and profane by Andrew Graham Dixon
Liberty's exiles : American loyalists in the revolutionary world by Maya Jasanoff
The rational optimist : how prosperity evolves by Matt Ridley
Bismarck : a life by Jonathan Steinberg
Reprobates by John Stubbs

2010
Nothing to envy : real lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
Alex's adventures in Numberland by Alex Bellos
Blood knots by Luke Jennings
Too big to fail : the inside story of how Wall Street and Washington fought to save the financial system from crisis--and themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin
A gambling man by Jenny Uglow
Catching fire : how cooking made us human by Richard Wrangham

2009
Leviathan, or The whale by Philip Hoare
Lords of finance : the bankers who broke the world by Liaquat Ahamed
Bad science by Ben Goldacre
The lost city of Z : a tale of deadly obsession in the Amazon by David Grann
The age of wonder : how the romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of science by Richard Holmes
Quantum : Einstein, Bohr and the great debate about the nature of reality by Manjit Kumar

2008
The suspicions of Mr. Whicher : a shocking murder and the undoing of a great Victorian detective by Kate Summerscale
Blood river : a journey to Africa's broken heart by Tim Butcher
Crow country by Mark Cocker
The whisperers : private life in Stalin's Russia by Orlando Figes
The world is what it is : the authorized biography of V. S. Naipaul by Patrick French
The rest is noise : listening to the twentieth century by Alex Ross

2007
Imperial life in the emerald city : inside Iraq's green zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Murder in Amsterdam : the death of Theo van Gogh and the limits of tolerance by Ian Buruma
Having it so good : Britain in the fifties By Peter Hennessey
Daughter of the desert by Georgina Howell (American title:  Gertrude Bell : queen of the desert, shaper of nations)
Brainwash : the secret history of mind control by Dominic Streatfeild
The Verneys : a true story of love, war, and madness in seventeenth-century England by Adrian Tinniswood

2006
A year in the life of William Shakespeare, 1599 by James Shapiro
Untold stories by Alan Bennett
The sale of the late king's goods by Jerry Brotton
Bad faith : a forgotten history of family, fatherland and Vichy France by Carmen Callil
Postwar : a history of Europe since 1945 By Tony Judt
The Orientalist : solving the mystery of a strange and a dangerous life by Tom Reiss

2005
Like a fiery elephant : the story of B. S. Johnson by Jonathan Coe
Stuart : a life backwards by Alexander Masters
Maximum city : Bombay lost and found by Suketu Mehta.
Istanbul : memories and the city by Orhan Pamuk
Matisse the master : a life of Henri Matisse, the conquest of colour, 1909-1954 by Hilary Spurling
The Italian boy : a tale of murder and body snatching in 1830s London by Sarah Wise

2004
Stasiland by Anna Funder
Gulag : a history by Anne Applebaum
John Clare : a biography by Jonathan Bate
A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson
The Zanzibar chest : a story of life, love, and death in foreign lands by Aidan Hartley
Rubicon : the last years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland

2003
Pushkin : a biography by T. J. Binyon
Natasha's dance : a cultural history of Russia by Orlando Figes
The devil that danced on the water : a daughter's quest by Aminatta Forna
Dr. Tatiana's sex advice to all creation by Olivia Judson
Samuel Pepys : the unequalled self by Claire Tomalin
Nelson : love & fame by Edgar Vincent

2002
Paris 1919 : six months that changed the world by Margaret Macmillan
Churchill : a biography by Roy Jenkins
The voices of Morebath : Reformation and rebellion in an English village by Eamon Duffy
The snow geese : a story of home by William Fiennes
Anthony Blunt : his lives by Miranda Carter
The invention of clouds : how an amateur meteorologist forged the language of the skies by Richard Hamblyn
Unfinest hour by Brendan Simms

2001
The Third Reich : a new history by Michael Burleigh
Trilobite! : an eyewitness to evolution by Richard Fortey
Night of stone : death and memory in twentieth century Russia by Catherine Merridale
Rimbaud by Graham Robb
Prince of princes : the life of Potemkin by Simon Sebag-Montefiore
John Maynard Keynes : volume 3 : fighting for freedom, 1937-1946 by Robert Skidelsky

2000
Berlioz : volume 2 : servitude and greatness, 1832-1869 by David Cairns

1999
Stalingrad : the fateful siege, 1942-1943 by Antony Beevor

NCR Book Award
1997
A people's tragedy : a history of the Russian Revolution by Orlando Figes

1996
The railway man : a pow's searing account of war, brutality and forgiveness by Eric Lomax

1995
Coming back Brockens : a year in a mining village by Mark Hudson

1994
Edward Heath : a biography by John Campbell

1993
Never again : Britain, 1945-1951 by Peter Hennessy

1992
Wild swans : three daughters of China by Jung Chang

1991
The invisible woman : the story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens by Claire Tomalin

1990
Citizens : a chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama

1989
Touching the void by Joe Simpson

1988
Nairn in darkness and light by David Thomson