Major Awards

General, cross-subject nonfiction prizes not restricted to a specific subject, such as the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction or the National Book Award for Nonfiction. These represent the broadest and most prestigious recognition a nonfiction book can receive.

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Search through 6,648 books

1
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Matthew Desmond · 2016
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4
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50
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2
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
John Dower · 2012
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5
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49
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3
Samuel Johnson
W. Jackson Bate · 2009
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3
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40
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4
All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
Tiya Miles · 2023
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4
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38
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5
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
David W. Blight · 2018
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4
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38
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6
A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide
Samantha Power · 2013
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4
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37
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7
Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
Sheri Fink · 2013
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4
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37
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8
A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
Neil Sheehan · 2010
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2
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36
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9
Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families
J. Anthony Lukas · 2012
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3
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36
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10
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Richard Rhodes · 1986
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3
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36
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11
Walter Lippmann and the American Century
Ronald Steel · 2017
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3
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36
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12
We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America
Roxanna Asgarian · 2023
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3
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35
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13
Native Nations: A Millennium in North America
Kathleen DuVal · 2024
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4
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33
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14
Edith Wharton: A Biography
R. W. B. Lewis · 1975
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3
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32
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15
G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century
Beverly Gage · 2023
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3
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32
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16
The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke
Jeffrey C. Stewart · 2018
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3
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31
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17
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
Elizabeth Kolbert · 2014
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2
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31
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18
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
Manning Marable · 2011
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1
win
29
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19
The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X
Les Payne and Tamara Payne · 2020
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2
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29
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20
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
Annette Gordon-Reed · 2009
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3
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29
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21
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
Lawrence Wright · 2006
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3
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29
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22
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
Katherine Boo · 2012
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2
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28
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23
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy
Heather Ann. Thompson · 2016
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28
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24
Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877
Eric Foner · 2011
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2
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28
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25
The Snow Leopard
Peter Matthiessen · 1996
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2
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28
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26
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
Ed Yong · 2022
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2
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27
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27
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Siddhartha Mukherjee · 2011
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2
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26
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28
His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice
Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa · 2022
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1
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25
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29
The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
Stephen Greenblatt · 2012
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2
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25
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30
A Stillness at Appomattox
Bruce Catton · 1990
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2
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24
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31
A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. · 2002
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2
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24
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32
Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape
Barry Lopez · 1987
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2
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24
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33
Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery
Leon F. Litwack · 2010
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2
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24
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34
Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates · 2015
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2
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24
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35
Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space
Adam Higginbotham · 2024
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2
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24
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36
Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam
Frances FitzGerald · 2014
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2
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24
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37
Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence
Erik Erikson · 1993
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2
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24
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38
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Douglas Hofstadter · 1979
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2
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24
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39
Henry James
Leon Edel · 1977
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2
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24
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40
Huey Long
T. Harry William · 1971
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2
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24
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41
Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World
Liaquat Ahamed · 2009
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2
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24
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42
Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Robert A. Caro · 1982
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2
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24
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43
Mornings on Horseback
David McCullough · 1982
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2
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24
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44
Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom
James MacGregor Burns · 2012
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2
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24
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45
The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History
Norman Mailer · 2013
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2
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24
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46
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
T. J. Stiles · 2009
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24
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47
The Flowering of New England: 1815–1865
Van Wyck Brooks · 2017
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2
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24
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48
The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism
Tina Rosenberg · 2010
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2
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24
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49
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
Edmund Morris · 2010
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2
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24
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50
The Soul of a New Machine
Tracy Kidder · 2011
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2
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24
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Ranked by weighted score across every tracked award. See how it's calculated