The Award Tally
FictionNonfiction

Wishlist

Saved in this browser only - it isn't synced to your other devices.

National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography

National Book Critics Circle

Annual award given by the National Book Critics Circle honoring the best biography published in the United States, recognizing excellence in the craft of life writing.

Latest winner · 2025

Next · expected February 2027

Shortlist announced Full award calendar

2025

  1. A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America’s Disabled

    Alex Green

    Won
  2. Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star

    Mayukh Sen

    Shortlisted
  3. Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution

    Amanda Vaill

    Won 1 more award · Nominated for 2 more awards

    Shortlisted
  4. Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore

    Ashley D. Farmer

    Shortlisted
  5. Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford

    Carla Kaplan

    Shortlisted

2024

  1. Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar

    Cynthia Carr

    Won 1 more award · Nominated for 1 more award

    Won
  2. Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution: A History from Below

    Jane Kamensky

    Shortlisted
  3. Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers

    Jean Strouse

    Shortlisted
  4. Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People

    Tiya Miles

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  5. The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker

    Amy Reading

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted

2023

  1. Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage

    Jonny Steinberg

    Nominated for 2 more awards

    Won
  2. Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disruptor

    Rachel Shteir

    Shortlisted
  3. Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong’s Rendezvous with American History

    Yunte Huang

    Shortlisted
  4. King: A Life

    Jonathan Eig

    Won 1 more award · Nominated for 2 more awards

    Shortlisted
  5. The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman’s Narrative

    Gregg Hecimovich

    Won 1 more award

    Shortlisted

2022

  1. G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century

    Beverly Gage

    Won 3 more awards · Nominated for 2 more awards

    Won
  2. Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life

    Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman

    Shortlisted
  3. Mr. B: George Balanchine's Twentieth Century

    Jennifer Homans

    Won 1 more award · Nominated for 4 more awards

    Shortlisted
  4. The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family

    Kerri K. Greenidge

    Nominated for 3 more awards

    Shortlisted
  5. Up From the Depths: Herman Melville, Louis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times

    Aaron Sachs

    Shortlisted

2021

  1. All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler

    Rebecca Donner

    Won 1 more award · Nominated for 2 more awards

    Won
  2. Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser

    Susan Bernofsky

    Shortlisted
  3. Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York

    Alexander Nemerov

    Shortlisted
  4. Mike Nichols: A Life

    Mark Harris

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  5. Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America

    Keisha N. Blain

    Shortlisted

2020

  1. Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World

    Amy Stanley

    Won 1 more award · Nominated for 2 more awards

    Won
  2. Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

    Heather Clark

    Nominated for 2 more awards

    Shortlisted
  3. The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X

    Les Payne and Tamara Payne

    Won 2 more awards · Nominated for 3 more awards

    Shortlisted
  4. The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s

    Maggie Doherty

    Shortlisted
  5. The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes

    Zachary D. Carter

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted

2019

  1. The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth

    Josh Levin

    Won
  2. A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II

    Sonia Purnell

    Won 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  3. Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century

    Charles King

    Won 1 more award · Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  4. L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated Female Byron

    Lucasta Miller

    Shortlisted
  5. Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century

    George Packer

    Won 1 more award · Nominated for 2 more awards

    Shortlisted

2018

  1. Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous

    Christopher Bonanos

    Won
  2. Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History

    Yunte Huang

    Shortlisted
  3. Ma'am Darling: Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret

    Craig Brown

    Shortlisted
  4. The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created

    Jane Leavy

    Shortlisted
  5. The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century

    Mark Lamster

    Shortlisted

2017

  1. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder

    Caroline Fraser

    Won 2 more awards · Nominated for 2 more awards

    Won
  2. Gorbachev: His Life and Times

    William Taubman

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted

  3. Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times

    Ken Whyte

    Shortlisted
  4. The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography

    Edmund Gordon

    Shortlisted
  5. The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek

    Howard Markel

    Shortlisted

2016

  1. Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life

    Ruth Franklin

    Won 1 more award

    Won
  2. Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary

    Joe Jackson

    Won 1 more award · Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  3. Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey

    Frances Wilson

    Nominated for 2 more awards

    Shortlisted
  4. Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White

    Michael Tisserand

    Shortlisted
  5. Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story

    Nigel Cliff

    Shortlisted

2015

  1. Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley

    Charlotte Gordon

    Won
  2. Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America

    T. J. Stiles

    Won 1 more award · Nominated for 3 more awards

    Shortlisted
  3. Dietrich and Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives

    Karin Wieland and Shelly Frisch

    Shortlisted
  4. Fortune's Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth

    Terry Alford

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  5. Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva

    Rosemary Sullivan

    Won 1 more award

    Shortlisted

2014

  1. Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh

    John Lahr

    Nominated for 2 more awards

    Won
  2. Literchoor Is My Beat: A Life of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions

    Ian S. MacNiven

    Shortlisted
  3. Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

    S. C. Gwynne

    Shortlisted
  4. The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography

    Miriam Pawel

    Shortlisted
  5. William Wells Brown: An African American Life

    Ezra Greenspan

    Shortlisted

2013

  1. Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World

    Leo Damrosch

    Nominated for 3 more awards

    Won
  2. Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

    John Eliot Gardiner

    Shortlisted
  3. Birth Certificate: The Story of Danilo Kis

    Mark Thompson

    Shortlisted
  4. Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore

    Linda Leavell

    Won 2 more awards

    Shortlisted
  5. Lawrence in Arabia

    Scott Anderson

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted

2012

  1. The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson

    Robert A. Caro

    Won 2 more awards · Nominated for 1 more award

    Won
  2. All We Know: Three Lives

    Lisa Cohen

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  3. Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece

    Michael Gorra

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  4. Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus: A Biography

    Lisa Jarnot

    Shortlisted
  5. The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo

    Tom Reiss

    Won 2 more awards · Nominated for 2 more awards

    Shortlisted

2011

  1. George F. Kennan: An American Life

    John Lewis Gaddis

    Won 1 more award

    Won
  2. Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

    Ezra F. Vogel

    Shortlisted
  3. Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934–1961

    Paul Hendrickson

    Shortlisted
  4. Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution

    Mary Gabriel

    Nominated for 2 more awards

    Shortlisted
  5. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

    Manning Marable

    Won 1 more award · Nominated for 5 more awards

    Shortlisted

2010

  1. How To Live, Or A Life Of Montaigne

    Sarah Bakewell

    Won
  2. Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective And His Rendezvous With American History

    Yunte Huang

    Shortlisted
  3. Simon Wiesenthal: The Lives And Legends

    Tom Segev

    Shortlisted
  4. The Killing of Crazy Horse

    Thomas Powers

    Won 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  5. The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham: A Biography

    Selina Hastings

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted

2009

  1. Cheever: A Life

    Blake Bailey

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Won
  2. Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone

    Stanislao G. Pugliese

    Shortlisted
  3. Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor

    Brad Gooch

    Shortlisted
  4. Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line

    Martha A. Sandweiss

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  5. Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector

    Benjamin Moser

    Shortlisted

2008

  1. The World is What it is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul

    Patrick French

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Won
  2. Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching

    Paula J. Giddings

    Won 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  3. The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century

    Steve Coll

    Won 1 more award · Nominated for 2 more awards

    Shortlisted
  4. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

    Annette Gordon-Reed

    Won 3 more awards

    Shortlisted
  5. White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson

    Brenda Wineapple

    Shortlisted

2001

  1. Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson

    Adam Sisman

    Won 1 more award · Nominated for 1 more award

    Won
  2. Borrowed Finery: A Memoir

    Paula Fox

    Shortlisted
  3. Milking the Moon: A Southerner’s Story of Life on This Planet

    Katherine Clark

    Shortlisted
  4. Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina

    David Hajdu

    Shortlisted
  5. The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal

    Barry Werth

    Shortlisted

2000

  1. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

    Herbert P. Bix

    Won 2 more awards

    Won
  2. I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-1945

    Viktor Klemperer

    Shortlisted
  3. Marcel Proust: A Life

    Jean-Yves Tadie

    Shortlisted
  4. The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst

    David Nasaw

    Won 2 more awards

    Shortlisted
  5. The Monk in the Garden: The Lost and Found Genius of Gregor Mendel, the Father of Genetics

    Robin Marantz Henig

    Shortlisted

1999

  1. The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White

    Henry Wiencek

    Won 1 more award

    Won
  2. Coleridge: Vol. II: Darker Reflections

    Richard Holmes

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  3. Morgan: American Financier

    Jean Strouse

    Shortlisted
  4. Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette

    Judith Thurman

    Won 1 more award · Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  5. The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times

    Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones

    Shortlisted

1998

  1. A Beautiful Mind

    Sylvia Nasar

    Won 1 more award · Nominated for 1 more award

    Won
  2. Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story

    Amanda Vaill

    Shortlisted
  3. King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero

    David Remnick

    Shortlisted
  4. Rocket Boys: A Memoir

    Homer H. Hickman Jr.

    Shortlisted
  5. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

    Ron Chernow

    Shortlisted

1993

  1. Genet

    Edmund White

    Won 1 more award · Nominated for 1 more award

    Won
  2. A Different Person

    James Merrill

    Shortlisted
  3. French Lessons

    Alice Kaplan

    Shortlisted
  4. The Passion of Michel Foucault

    James Miller

    Shortlisted
  5. W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919

    David Levering Lewis

    Won 2 more awards · Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted

1992

  1. Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World

    Carol Brightman

    Won 1 more award

    Won
  2. Kissinger

    Walter Isaacson

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  3. Looking for the Light: The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott

    Paul Hendrickson

    Shortlisted
  4. The Rascal King: The Life and Times of James Michael Curley, 1874-1958

    Jack Beatty

    Shortlisted
  5. Truman

    David McCullough

    Won 1 more award · Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted

1991

  1. Patrimony: A True Story

    Philip Roth

    Won 1 more award

    Won
  2. Anne Sexton: A Biography

    Diane Wood Middlebrook

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  3. Maus II

    Art Spiegelman

    Shortlisted
  4. The Journals of John Cheever

    John Cheever

    Shortlisted
  5. The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan

    Robert Kanigel

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted

1990

  1. Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. II

    Robert A. Caro

    Won 1 more award · Nominated for 1 more award

    Won
  2. A Hole in the World: An American Boyhood

    Richard Rhodes

    Shortlisted
  3. Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1874–1952

    T. H. Watkins

    Won 1 more award · Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  4. Strong Drink, Strong Language

    John Espey

    Shortlisted
  5. The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends, 1880–1918

    Patricia O'Toole

    Nominated for 2 more awards

    Shortlisted

1989

  1. A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt

    Geoffrey C. Ward

    Won 2 more awards · Nominated for 1 more award

    Won

  2. Glenn Gould: A Life and Variations

    Otto Friedrich

    Shortlisted
  3. God Gave Us This Country: Tekamthi and the First American Civil War

    Bil Gilbert

    Shortlisted
  4. Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician

    Roger Morris

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  5. This Boy's Life: A Memoir

    Tobias Wolff

    Won 1 more award

    Shortlisted

1988

  1. Oscar Wilde

    Richard Ellmann

    Won 2 more awards

    Won
  2. Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir

    Paul Monette

    Shortlisted
  3. The Letters of T.S. Eliot, 1909-1922

    Valerie Eliot

    Shortlisted
  4. The Selected Correspondence of Kenneth Burke and Malcolm Cowley, 1915-1981

    Paul Jay

    Shortlisted
  5. Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an Age of Information

    Robert Wright

    Shortlisted

1987

  1. Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World

    Donald R. Howard

    Won 1 more award

    Won
  2. An American Childhood

    Annie Dillard

    Shortlisted

  3. Don’t Tread on Me: The Selected Letters of S.J. Perelman

    Prudence Crowther

    Shortlisted
  4. Private Domain

    Paul Taylor

    Shortlisted
  5. Timebends: A Life

    Arthur Miller

    Shortlisted

1986

  1. The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. I: 1902-1941

    Arnold Rampersad

    Won 1 more award

    Won
  2. Dostoevsky: The Stir of Liberation, 1860-1865

    Joseph Frank

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  3. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale

    Art Spiegelman

    Shortlisted
  4. Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter

    Theodore Rosengarten

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  5. Velázquez: Painter and Courtier

    Jonathan Brown

    Shortlisted

1985

  1. Henry James: A Life

    Leon Edel

    Won 1 more award

    Won
  2. Brigham Young: American Moses

    Leonard Arrington

    Shortlisted
  3. Giacometti: A Biography

    James Lord

    Shortlisted

  4. Louise Bogan

    Elizabeth Frank

    Won 1 more award

    Shortlisted

  5. Visible Light: Four Creative Biographies

    Michael Lesy

    Shortlisted

1984

  1. Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850–1859

    Joseph Frank

    Won 1 more award

    Won
  2. Home Before Dark

    Susan Cheever

    Shortlisted
  3. Josephine Herbst

    Elinor Langer

    Shortlisted
  4. One Writer's Beginnings

    Eudora Welty

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  5. Walt Whitman: The Making of a Poet

    Paul Zweig

    Shortlisted

1983

  1. Minor Characters

    Joyce Johnson

    Won 1 more award

    Won
  2. Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just

    Kenneth R. Manning

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted
  3. Eleni

    Nicholas Gage

    Shortlisted
  4. The Roots of Treason: Ezra Pound and the Secret of St. Elizabeth’s

    E. Fuller Torrey

    Shortlisted
  5. Thomas Carlyle

    Fred Kaplan

    Nominated for 1 more award

    Shortlisted

Frequently asked questions

Who won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography in 2025?
“A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America’s Disabled” by Alex Green won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography in 2025.
Who are the most recent National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography winners?
2025: “A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America’s Disabled” by Alex Green; 2024: “Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar” by Cynthia Carr; 2023: “Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage” by Jonny Steinberg; 2022: “G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century” by Beverly Gage; 2021: “All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler” by Rebecca Donner.
Has anyone won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography more than once?
Yes - 1 author has: Robert A. Caro (1990, 2012).