ShelfEvidentNational Book Award for Nonfiction
2025 Winner
2025 Shortlist & Longlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
Shortlist
Complete History
2020s
- 2025One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This — Omar El Akkad
- 2024Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling — Jason De León
- 2023The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of US History — Ned Blackhawk
- 2022South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation — Imani Perry
- 2021All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake — Tiya Miles
- 2020The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X — Les Payne
2010s
- 2019The Yellow House: A Memoir — Sarah M. Broom
- 2018The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke — Jeffrey C. Stewart
- 2017The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia — Masha Gessen
- 2016Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America — Ibram X. Kendi
- 2015Between the World and Me — Ta-Nehisi Coates
- 2014Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China — Evan Osnos
- 2013The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America — George Packer
- 2012Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity — Katherine Boo
- 2011The Swerve: How the World Became Modern — Stephen Greenblatt
- 2010Just Kids — Patti Smith
2000s
- 2009The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt — T.J. Stiles
- 2008The Hemingses of Monticello — Annette Gordon-Reed
- 2007Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA — Tim Weiner
- 2006The Worst Hard Time — Timothy Egan
- 2005The Year of Magical Thinking — Joan Didion
- 2004Arc of Justice — Kevin Boyle
- 2003Waiting for Snow in Havana — Carlos Eire
- 2002Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson — Robert A. Caro
- 2001The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression — Andrew Solomon
- 2000In the Heart of the Sea — Nathaniel Philbrick
1990s
- 1999Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II — John W. Dower
- 1998Slaves in the Family — Edward Ball
- 1997American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson — Joseph J. Ellis
- 1996An American Requiem — James P. Carroll
- 1995The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism — Tina Rosenberg
- 1994How We Die — Sherwin B. Nuland
- 1993United States: Essays 1952-1992 — Gore Vidal
- 1992Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story — Paul Monette
- 1991Freedom, Vol. 1: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture — Orlando Patterson
- 1990The House of Morgan — Ron Chernow
1980s
- 1989From Beirut to Jerusalem — Thomas L. Friedman
- 1988A Bright Shining Lie — Neil Sheehan
- 1987The Making of the Atomic Bomb — Richard Rhodes
- 1986Arctic Dreams — Barry Lopez
- 1985Common Ground — J. Anthony Lukas
- 1984Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845 — Robert V. Remini
- 1983China: Alive in the Bitter Sea — Fox Butterfield
- 1982The Soul of a New Machine — Tracy Kidder
- 1981China Men — Maxine Hong Kingston
- 1980The Right Stuff — Tom Wolfe
1970s
- 1979The Snow Leopard — Peter Matthiessen
- 1978Samuel Johnson — W. Jackson Bate
- 1977Norman Thomas: The Last Idealist — W. A. Swanberg
- 1976The Great War and Modern Memory — Paul Fussell
- 1975Marcel Proust — Roger Shattuck
- 1974Deeper into Movies — Pauline Kael
- 1973Diderot — Arthur M. Wilson
- 1972The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven — Charles Rosen
- 1971Cocteau: A Biography — Francis Steegmuller
- 1970An Unfinished Woman — Lillian Hellman
1960s
- 1969The Armies of the Night — Norman Mailer
- 1968Selected Essays — William Troy
- 1967Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain — Justin Kaplan
- 1966Paris Journal, 1944-1965 — Janet Flanner
- 1965The Oysters of Locmariaquer — Eleanor Clark
- 1964John Keats: The Making of a Poet — Aileen Ward
- 1963Henry James — Leon Edel
- 1962The City in History — Lewis Mumford
- 1961The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich — William L. Shirer
- 1960James Joyce — Richard Ellmann
1950s
- 1959Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Stael — J. Christopher Herold
- 1958The Lion and the Throne — Catherine Drinker Bowen
- 1957Russia Leaves the War — George F. Kennan
- 1956An American in Italy — Herbert Kubly
- 1955The Measure of Man — Joseph Wood Krutch
- 1954A Stillness at Appomattox — Bruce Catton
- 1953The Course of Empire — Bernard De Voto
- 1952The Sea Around Us — Rachel Carson
- 1951Herman Melville — Newton Arvin
- 1950The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson — Ralph L. Rusk
About the National Book Award for Nonfiction
The National Book Award for Nonfiction is one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the United States, given annually by the National Book Foundation to American authors for distinguished works of nonfiction. The award has been given in various forms since 1950 and in its current configuration since 1983 after a reorganization of the National Book Awards. Prize money of $10,000 goes to the winner, with $1,000 to each finalist. The award recognizes exceptional nonfiction of all kinds — memoir, reportage, history, science writing, criticism, and more — with the stipulation that the book be written by a US citizen and published in the US between December 1 of the previous year and November 30 of the award year. The National Book Foundation announces a longlist in September, a shortlist (finalists) in October, and winners in November at the National Book Awards ceremony in New York City. The award has recognized landmark works including Patti Smith's Just Kids, Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me, and Masha Gessen's The Future Is History. Unlike the Pulitzer, the National Book Award for Nonfiction is open to any genre of nonfiction, making it the broadest recognition for American nonfiction prose.
Frequently Asked Questions
- US citizens who publish a nonfiction book in the US between December 1 of the previous year and November 30 of the award year are eligible.
- The winner receives $10,000 and a bronze medal. Each finalist receives $1,000 and a bronze medal.
- Winners are announced in November at the National Book Awards ceremony in New York City. Longlists are announced in September and shortlists (finalists) in October.
- Five finalists are named each year, drawn from a longlist of ten books announced earlier in the season.
- No. Works in translation are eligible for the separate National Book Award for Translated Literature. The Nonfiction award is for books originally written in English by US citizens.
- A panel of five judges — authors, critics, and scholars — deliberate independently of the National Book Foundation and select the winner from among the five finalists.
- Some authors have won the broader National Book Awards in multiple categories, but repeat wins specifically in Nonfiction are uncommon.