The Award Tally
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Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction

Kirkus Reviews

An annual American book prize awarded by Kirkus Reviews to a nonfiction title that received a starred Kirkus review, carrying a $50,000 cash award, one of the largest literary prizes in the U.S.

Search through 1,818 books

2026

  1. A Hymn to Life: Shame Has To Change Sides

    Gisèle Pelicot, with Judith Perrignon Natasha Lehrer (tr.) Ruth Diver (tr.)

    Shortlisted
  2. A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness

    Michael Pollan

    Shortlisted
  3. Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast

    Pamela Colloff

    Shortlisted
  4. Defiance: A Memoir of Awakening, Rebellion, and Survival in Syria

    Loubna Mrie

    Shortlisted

  5. Keeper of My Kin: Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter

    Ada Ferrer

    Shortlisted

  6. London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth

    Patrick Radden Keefe

    Shortlisted

2025

  1. King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation

    Scott Anderson

    Won
  2. A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck

    Sophie Elmhirst

    Shortlisted
  3. America, América: A New History of the New World

    Greg Grandin

    Shortlisted
  4. Baldwin: A Love Story

    Nicholas Boggs

    Shortlisted
  5. Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People

    Imani Perry

    Shortlisted

  6. Mother Mary Comes to Me

    Arundhati Roy

    Shortlisted

2024

  1. Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space

    Adam Higginbotham

    Won
  2. Another Word for Love: A Memoir

    Carvell Wallace

    Shortlisted
  3. Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir

    Tessa Hulls

    Shortlisted

  4. The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the CIA, and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq

    Steve Coll

    Shortlisted

  5. The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise

    Olivia Laing

    Shortlisted

  6. Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America

    Shefali Luthra

    Shortlisted

2023

  1. Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on the Meanings and Myths of "Latino"

    Héctor Tobar

    Won

  2. How Not to Kill Yourself: A Portrait of the Suicidal Mind

    Clancy Martin

    Shortlisted

  3. How to Say Babylon: A Memoir

    Safiya Sinclair

    Shortlisted
  4. Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom

    Ilyon Woo

    Shortlisted
  5. Mr. B: George Balanchine's 20th Century

    Jennifer Homans

    Shortlisted

  6. Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution

    Tania Branigan

    Shortlisted

2022

  1. In Sensorium

    Tanaïs

    Won
  2. An Immense World

    Ed Yong

    Shortlisted
  3. By Hands Now Known

    Margaret A. Burnham

    Shortlisted

  4. The 1619 Project

    Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper (ed.), Ilena Silverman (ed.), Jake Silverstein (ed.)

    Shortlisted

  5. The Facemaker

    Lindsey Fitzharris

    Shortlisted

  6. These Precious Days

    Ann Patchett

    Shortlisted

2021

  1. Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir

    Brian Broome

    Won
  2. All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

    Tiya Miles

    Shortlisted

  3. Horizontal Vertigo: A City Called Mexico

    Juan Villoro, Alfred MacAdam (tr.)

    Shortlisted

  4. Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life

    Katherine E. Standefer

    Shortlisted

  5. People Love Dead Jews: Reports From a Haunted Present

    Dara Horn

    Shortlisted
  6. Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness

    Kristen Radtke

    Shortlisted

2020

  1. Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream

    Mychal Denzel Smith

    Won
  2. A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes

    Eric Jay Dolin

    Shortlisted
  3. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

    Isabel Wilkerson

    Shortlisted
  4. Fathoms: The World in the Whale

    Rebecca Giggs

    Shortlisted

  5. The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power

    Deirdre Mask

    Shortlisted

  6. World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments

    Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Fumi Nakamura (ill.)

    Shortlisted

2019

  1. How We Fight for Our Lives: A Memoir

    Saeed Jones

    Won

  2. Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest

    Hanif Abdurraqib

    Shortlisted
  3. No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us

    Rachel Louise Snyder

    Shortlisted
  4. Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

    Patrick Radden Keefe

    Shortlisted
  5. The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You

    Dina Nayeri

    Shortlisted

  6. When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back: Carl's Book

    Naja Marie Aidt, Denise Newman (tr.)

    Shortlisted

2018

  1. Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays)

    Rebecca Solnit

    Won
  2. American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment

    Shane Bauer

    Shortlisted
  3. Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America

    Beth Macy

    Shortlisted
  4. Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth

    Sarah Smarsh

    Shortlisted
  5. Heavy: An American Memoir

    Kiese Laymon

    Shortlisted

  6. The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

    Timothy Snyder

    Shortlisted

2017

  1. The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea

    Jack E. Davis

    Won
  2. Henry David Thoreau: A Life

    Laura Walls

    Shortlisted

  3. Priestdaddy: A Memoir

    Patricia Lockwood

    Shortlisted

  4. Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions

    Valeria Luiselli, Lizzie Davis (tr.)

    Shortlisted

  5. The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South

    Michael W. Twitty

    Shortlisted

  6. The Seeds of Life: From Aristotle to da Vinci, from Sharks' Teeth to Frogs' Pants, the Long and Strange Quest to Discover Where Babies Come

    Edward Dolnick

    Shortlisted

2016

  1. In the Darkroom

    Susan Faludi

    Won
  2. At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails

    Sarah Bakewell

    Shortlisted
  3. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

    Matthew Desmond

    Shortlisted

  4. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

    JD Vance

    Shortlisted

  5. The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America

    Michael Eric Dyson

    Shortlisted

  6. Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South

    Beth Macy

    Shortlisted

2015

  1. Between the World and Me

    Ta-Nehisi Coates

    Won
  2. H is for Hawk

    Helen Macdonald

    Shortlisted

  3. Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers

    Simon Winchester

    Shortlisted
  4. The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916–1931

    Adam Tooze

    Shortlisted
  5. The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World

    Andrea Wulf

    Shortlisted

  6. Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War That Won It

    John Ferling

    Shortlisted

2014

  1. Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

    Roz Chast

    Won
  2. Capital in the Twenty-First Century

    Thomas Piketty

    Shortlisted
  3. Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World

    Leo Damrosch

    Shortlisted
  4. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

    Bryan Stevenson

    Shortlisted

  5. The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science

    Armand Marie Leroi

    Shortlisted
  6. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

    Elizabeth Kolbert

    Shortlisted