The Award Tally
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PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction

PEN America

A PEN America literary award recognizing a nonfiction book that illuminates issues of contemporary social, political, or economic concern, honoring the tradition of public intellectual engagement associated with economist John Kenneth Galbraith.

Search through 1,818 books

2026

  1. A Greek Tragedy: One Day, a Deadly Shipwreck, and the Human Cost of the Refugee Crisis

    Jeanne Carstensen

    Shortlisted
  2. Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning

    Peter Beinart

    Shortlisted

  3. Nothing More of This Land: Community, Power, and the Search for Indigenous Identity

    Joseph Lee

    Shortlisted
  4. The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery

    Siddharth Kara

    Shortlisted

  5. We Survived the Night

    Julian Brave NoiseCat

    Shortlisted

2025

  1. In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States

    Ana Raquel Minian

    Won
  2. The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq

    Steve Coll

    Shortlisted

  3. The Lucky Ones: A Memoir

    Zara Chowdhary

    Shortlisted

  4. The Rent Collectors: Exploitation, Murder, and Redemption in Immigrant LA

    Jesse Katz

    Shortlisted

2024

  1. The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America

    Saket Soni

    Won
  2. Cobalt Red: How the blood of the Congo powers our lives

    Siddharth Kara

    Shortlisted
  3. Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World

    John Vaillant

    Shortlisted

  4. Outrage Machine: How Tech Amplifies Discontent, Disrupts Democracy—And What We Can Do About It

    Tobias Rose-Stockwell

    Shortlisted
  5. We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America

    Roxanna Asgarian

    Shortlisted

2023

  1. The Inheritors: An Intimate Portrait of South Africa’s Racial Reckoning

    Eve Fairbanks

    Won
  2. Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands

    Kelly L. Hernández

    Shortlisted

  3. Solito: A Memoir

    Javier Zamora

    Shortlisted
  4. South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon To Understand the Soul of a Nation

    Imani Perry

    Shortlisted

  5. The War of Nerves: Inside the Cold War Mind

    Martin Sixsmith

    Shortlisted

2022

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

    Tiya Miles

    Won
  2. Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration

    Reuben Jonathan Miller

    Shortlisted
  3. How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

    Clint Smith

    Shortlisted
  4. Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City

    Andrea Elliott

    Shortlisted

  5. Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993

    Sarah Schulman

    Shortlisted

2021

  1. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals

    Saidiya Hartman

    Won

2019

  1. In a Day's Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers

    Bernice Yeung

    Won

2017

  1. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

    Matthew Desmond

    Won

2015

  1. Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

    Sheri Fink

    Won
  2. League of Denial

    Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru

    Shortlisted

  3. Our Declaration

    Danielle Allen

    Shortlisted

  4. The Big Truck That Went By

    Jonathan M. Katz

    Shortlisted

  5. This Changes Everything

    Naomi Klein

    Shortlisted

2013

  1. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

    Katherine Boo

    Won

  2. God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine

    Victoria Sweet

    Shortlisted

  3. Iron Curtain

    Anne Applebaum

    Shortlisted

  4. Moby-Duck

    Donovan Hohn

    Shortlisted

2011

  1. Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire

    Robert Perkinson

    Won
  2. Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq

    John W. Dower

    Shortlisted

  3. The Warmth of Other Suns

    Isabel Wilkerson

    Shortlisted

2009

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

    Steve Coll

    Won
  2. Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography

    Stanley Plumly

    Shortlisted
  3. Samuel Johnson: The Struggle

    Jeffrey Meyers

    Shortlisted

2007

  1. House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power

    James Carroll

    Won
  2. Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

    Thomas E. Ricks

    Shortlisted
  3. The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation

    Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff

    Shortlisted