The Award Tally
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Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography

The Pulitzer Prize Board, administered by Columbia University

Annual American prize honoring a distinguished biography, autobiography, or memoir by an American author, first awarded in 1917 as part of the Pulitzer Prize program.

Search through 1,818 books

2026

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

    Amanda Vaill

    Won

  2. The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford

    James McWilliams

    Shortlisted

  3. True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen

    Lance Richardson

    Shortlisted

2025

  1. Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life

    Jason Roberts

    Won

  2. John Lewis: A Life

    David Greenberg

    Shortlisted

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

    Amy Reading

    Shortlisted

2024

  1. King: A Life

    Jonathan Eig

    Won
  2. Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom

    Ilyon Woo

    Won

  3. Larry McMurtry: A Life

    Tracy Daugherty

    Shortlisted

2023

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

    Beverly Gage

    Won
  2. His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice

    Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa

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

    Jennifer Homans

    Shortlisted

2022

  1. Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist's Memoir of the Jim Crow South

    Winfred Rembert† and Erin I. Kelly

    Won
  2. Pessoa: A Biography

    Richard Zenith

    Shortlisted
  3. The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine

    Janice P. Nimura

    Shortlisted

2021

  1. The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X

    Les Payne and Tamara Payne

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

    Heather Clark

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

    Amy Stanley

    Shortlisted

2020

  1. Sontag: Her Life and Work

    Benjamin Moser

    Won
  2. Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century

    George Packer

    Shortlisted

  3. Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me

    Deirdre Bair

    Shortlisted

2019

  1. The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke

    Jeffrey C. Stewart

    Won

  2. Proust's Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siècle Paris

    Caroline Weber

    Shortlisted

  3. The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam

    Max Boot

    Shortlisted

2018

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

    Caroline Fraser

    Won
  2. Richard Nixon: The Life

    John A. Farrell

    Shortlisted

  3. Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character

    Kay Redfield Jamison

    Shortlisted

2017

  1. The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between

    Hisham Matar

    Won
  2. In the Darkroom

    Susan Faludi

    Shortlisted

  3. When Breath Becomes Air

    Paul Kalanithi

    Shortlisted

2016

  1. Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life

    William Finnegan

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

    T. J. Stiles

    Shortlisted

  3. The Light of the World: A Memoir

    Elizabeth Alexander

    Shortlisted

2015

  1. The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe

    David I. Kertzer

    Won

  2. Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism

    Thomas Brothers

    Shortlisted
  3. Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928

    Stephen Kotkin

    Shortlisted

2014

  1. Margaret Fuller: A New American Life

    Megan Marshall

    Won
  2. Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World

    Leo Damrosch

    Shortlisted

  3. Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life

    Jonathan Sperber

    Shortlisted

2013

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

    Tom Reiss

    Won

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

    Michael Gorra

    Shortlisted
  3. The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy

    David Nasaw

    Shortlisted

2012

  1. George F. Kennan: An American Life

    John Lewis Gaddis

    Won
  2. Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution

    Mary Gabriel

    Shortlisted
  3. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

    Manning Marable

    Shortlisted

2011

  1. Washington: A Life

    Ron Chernow

    Won

  2. Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon

    Michael O'Brien

    Shortlisted

  3. The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century

    Alan Brinkley

    Shortlisted

2010

  1. The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

    T. J. Stiles

    Won
  2. Cheever: A Life

    Blake Bailey

    Shortlisted

  3. Woodrow Wilson: A Biography

    John Milton Cooper, Jr.

    Shortlisted

2009

  1. American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House

    Jon Meacham

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

    Steve Coll

    Shortlisted
  3. Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

    H.W. Brands

    Shortlisted

2008

  1. Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father

    John Matteson

    Won

  2. The Life of Kingsley Amis

    Zachary Leader

    Shortlisted

  3. The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein

    Martin Duberman

    Shortlisted

2007

  1. The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher

    Debby Applegate

    Won
  2. Andrew Carnegie

    David Nasaw

    Shortlisted

  3. John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty

    Arthur H. Cash

    Shortlisted

2006

  1. American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

    Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

    Won
  2. The Peabody Sisters: Three Women who Ignited American Romanticism

    Megan Marshall

    Shortlisted
  3. The Year of Magical Thinking

    Joan Didion

    Shortlisted

2005

  1. de Kooning: An American Master

    Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan

    Won

  2. Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of The Birds of America

    William Souder

    Shortlisted
  3. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

    Stephen Greenblatt

    Shortlisted

2004

  1. Khrushchev: The Man and His Era

    William Taubman

    Won
  2. Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work

    Hayden Herrera

    Shortlisted

  3. Isaac Newton

    James Gleick

    Shortlisted

2003

  1. Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson

    Robert A. Caro

    Won
  2. Beethoven: The Music and the Life

    Lewis Lockwood

    Shortlisted

  3. The Fly Swatter: A Portrait of an Exceptional Character

    Nicholas Dawidoff

    Shortlisted

2002

  1. John Adams

    David McCullough

    Won
  2. An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood

    Jimmy Carter

    Shortlisted

  3. Grant

    Jean Edward Smith

    Shortlisted

2001

  1. W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963

    David Levering Lewis

    Won

  2. Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician

    Christoph Wolff

    Shortlisted
  3. The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

    H.W. Brands

    Shortlisted

2000

  1. Vera, Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov

    Stacy Schiff

    Won
  2. Clear Springs: A Memoir

    Bobbie Ann Mason

    Shortlisted
  3. Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love

    Dava Sobel

    Shortlisted

1999

  1. Lindbergh

    A. Scott Berg

    Won
  2. A Beautiful Mind

    Sylvia Nasar

    Shortlisted
  3. At Home with the Marquis de Sade: A Life

    Francine du Plessix Gray

    Shortlisted

1998

  1. Personal History

    Katharine Graham

    Won
  2. Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public-Private Life

    James H. Jones

    Shortlisted
  3. Whittaker Chambers: A Biography

    Sam Tanenhaus

    Shortlisted

1997

  1. Angela's Ashes: A Memoir

    Frank McCourt

    Won

  2. Herman Melville: A Biography, Volume 1, 1819–1851

    Hershel Parker

    Shortlisted

  3. In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country

    Kim Barnes

    Shortlisted

1996

  1. God: A Biography

    Jack Miles

    Won

  2. John Sloan: Painter and Rebel

    John Loughery

    Shortlisted

  3. Mozart: A Life

    Maynard Solomon

    Shortlisted

1995

  1. Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life

    Joan D. Hedrick

    Won

  2. Hugo Black: A Biography

    Roger K. Newman

    Shortlisted

  3. Saint-Exupery: A Biography

    Stacy Schiff

    Shortlisted

1994

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

    David Levering Lewis

    Won

  2. Genet: A Biography

    Edmund White

    Shortlisted

  3. In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding

    Deborah Baker

    Shortlisted

1993

  1. Truman

    David McCullough

    Won
  2. Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

    James Gleick

    Shortlisted

  3. Kissinger: A Biography

    Walter Isaacson

    Shortlisted

1992

  1. Fortunate Son: The Autobiography of Lewis B. Puller Jr.

    Lewis B. Puller

    Won

  2. Frederick Douglass

    William S. McFeely

    Shortlisted

  3. Orwell: The Authorized Biography

    Michael Shelden

    Shortlisted

1991

  1. Jackson Pollock: An American Saga

    Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith

    Won
  2. Alfred I. Du Pont: The Man and His Family

    Joseph Frazier Wall

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

    Patricia O'Toole

    Shortlisted

1990

  1. Machiavelli in Hell

    Sebastian de Grazia

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

    Geoffrey C. Ward

    Shortlisted
  3. Clear Pictures: First Loves, First Guides

    Reynolds Price

    Shortlisted

  4. The Road from Coorain

    Jill Ker Conway

    Shortlisted

1989

  1. Oscar Wilde

    Richard Ellmann†

    Won
  2. A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam

    Neil Sheehan

    Shortlisted
  3. Freud: A Life for Our Time

    Peter Gay

    Shortlisted

  4. The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume II, 1941–1967: I Dream a World

    Arnold Rampersad

    Shortlisted

1988

  1. Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe

    David Herbert Donald

    Won

  2. George Santayana: A Biography

    John Owen McCormick

    Shortlisted
  3. Hemingway

    Kenneth S. Lynn

    Shortlisted

1987

  1. Bearing The Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

    David J. Garrow

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

    Joseph Frank

    Shortlisted

  3. Murrow: His Life and Times

    A.M. Sperber

    Shortlisted

  4. The Life and Times of Congressman John Quincy Adams

    Leonard L. Richards

    Shortlisted

1986

  1. Louise Bogan: A Portrait

    Elizabeth Frank

    Won
  2. A Hidden Childhood: A Jewish Girl's Sanctuary in a French Convent, 1942–1945

    Frida Scheps Weinstein

    Shortlisted

  3. George Washington Williams: A Biography

    John Hope Franklin

    Shortlisted

1985

  1. The Life and Times of Cotton Mather

    Kenneth Silverman

    Won
  2. Becoming William James

    Howard M. Feinstein

    Shortlisted

  3. The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton

    Michael Mott

    Shortlisted

1984

  1. Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915

    Louis R. Harlan

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

    Kenneth Manning

    Shortlisted

  3. Thomas Carlyle: A Biography

    Fred Kaplan

    Shortlisted

1983

  1. Growing Up

    Russell Baker

    Won

  2. Churchill: Young Man in a Hurry, 1874–1915

    Ted Morgan

    Shortlisted

  3. Thomas E. Dewey and His Times

    Richard Norton Smith

    Shortlisted

1982

  1. Grant: A Biography

    William S. McFeely

    Won
  2. Mornings on Horseback

    David McCullough

    Shortlisted

  3. Waldo Emerson

    Gay Wilson Allen

    Shortlisted

1981

  1. Peter the Great: His Life and World

    Robert K. Massie

    Won
  2. Walt Whitman: A Life

    Justin Kaplan

    Shortlisted
  3. Walter Lippmann and the American Century

    Ronald Steel

    Shortlisted

1980

  1. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

    Edmund Morris

    Won

  2. Being Bernard Berenson

    Meryle Secrest

    Shortlisted
  3. Bernard Berenson: The Making of a Connoisseur

    Ernest Samuels

    Shortlisted

  4. The Duke of Deception

    Geoffrey Wolff

    Shortlisted

1979

  1. Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews

    Leonard Baker

    Won

1978

  1. Samuel Johnson

    W. Jackson Bate

    Won

1977

  1. A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence

    John E. Mack

    Won

1976

  1. Edith Wharton: A Biography

    R. W. B. Lewis

    Won

1975

  1. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

    Robert Caro,

    Won

1974

  1. O'Neill, Son and Artist

    Louis Sheaffer

    Won

1973

  1. Luce and His Empire

    W. A. Swanberg

    Won

1972

  1. Eleanor and Franklin

    Joseph P. Lash

    Won

1971

  1. Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 1915–1938

    Lawrance Thompson

    Won

1970

  1. Huey Long

    T. Harry William

    Won

1969

  1. The Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends

    Benjamin Lawrence Reid

    Won

1968

  1. Memoirs

    George F. Kennan

    Won

1967

  1. Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain

    Justin Kaplan

    Won

1966

  1. A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House

    Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

    Won

1965

  1. Henry Adams, 3 vols.

    Ernest Samuels

    Won

1964

  1. John Keats

    Walter Jackson Bate

    Won

1963

  1. Henry James

    Leon Edel

    Won

1961

  1. Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War

    David Donald

    Won

1960

  1. John Paul Jones

    Samuel Eliot Morison

    Won

1959

  1. Woodrow Wilson

    Arthur Walworth

    Won

1958

  1. George Washington, vols. I-VII

    Douglas Southall Freeman† with John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth

    Won

1957

  1. Profiles in Courage

    John F. Kennedy

    Won

1956

  1. Benjamin Henry Latrobe

    Talbot Faulkner Hamlin

    Won

1955

  1. The Taft Story

    William S. White

    Won

1954

  1. The Spirit of St. Louis

    Charles A. Lindbergh

    Won

1953

  1. Edmund Pendleton 1721–1803

    David J. Mays

    Won

1952

  1. Charles Evans Hughes

    Merlo J. Pusey

    Won

1951

  1. John C. Calhoun: American Portrait

    Margaret Louise Coit

    Won

1950

  1. John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy

    Samuel Flagg Bemis

    Won

1949

  1. Roosevelt and Hopkins

    Robert E. Sherwood

    Won

1948

  1. Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow

    Margaret Clapp

    Won

1947

  1. The Autobiography of William Allen White

    William Allen White†

    Won

1946

  1. Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir

    Linnie Marsh Wolfe

    Won

1945

  1. George Bancroft: Brahmin Rebel

    Russel Blaine Nye

    Won

1944

  1. The American Leonardo: The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse

    Carleton Mabee

    Won

1943

  1. Admiral of the Ocean Sea

    Samuel Eliot Morison

    Won

1942

  1. Crusader in Crinoline: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Forrest Wilson

    Won

1941

  1. Jonathan Edwards, 1703–1758: A Biography

    Ola Elizabeth Winslow

    Won

1940

  1. Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters. Vols. VII and VIII

    Ray Stannard Baker

    Won

1939

  1. Benjamin Franklin

    Carl Van Doren

    Won

1938

  1. The Life of Andrew Jackson, 2 vols.

    Marquis James

    Won

  2. Pedlar's Progress: The Life of Bronson Alcott

    Odell Shepard

    Shortlisted

1937

  1. Hamilton Fish

    Allan Nevins

    Won

1936

  1. The Thought and Character of William James

    Ralph Barton Perry

    Won

1935

  1. R. E. Lee

    Douglas S. Freeman

    Won

1934

  1. John Hay

    Tyler Dennett

    Won

1933

  1. Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage

    Allan Nevins

    Won

1932

  1. Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography

    Henry F. Pringle

    Won

1931

  1. Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard University, 1869–1901

    Henry James

    Won

1930

  1. The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston

    Marquis James

    Won

1929

  1. The Training of an American: The Earlier Life and Letters of Walter H. Page

    Burton J. Hendrick

    Won

1928

  1. The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas

    Charles Edward Russell

    Won

1927

  1. Whitman

    Emory Holloway

    Won

1926

  1. The Life of Sir William Osler, 2 vols.

    Harvey Cushing

    Won

1925

  1. Barrett Wendell and His Letters

    M. A. De Wolfe Howe

    Won

1924

  1. From Immigrant to Inventor

    Michael I. Pupin

    Won

1923

  1. The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page

    Burton J. Hendrick

    Won

1922

  1. A Daughter of the Middle Border

    Hamlin Garland

    Won

1921

  1. The Americanization of Edward Bok: The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After

    Edward Bok

    Won

1920

  1. The Life of John Marshall, 4 vols.

    Albert J. Beveridge

    Won

1919

  1. The Education of Henry Adams

    Henry Adams†

    Won

1918

  1. Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed

    William Cabell Bruce

    Won

1917

  1. Julia Ward Howe

    Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliott, assisted by Florence Howe Hall

    Won