The Award Tally
FictionNonfiction

Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction

The Pulitzer Prize Board, Columbia University

Annual American prize honoring a distinguished and appropriately documented book of nonfiction by an American author that is not eligible for consideration in another Pulitzer Prize category, covering any subject from history to science to memoir.

Search through 1,818 books

2026

  1. There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

    Brian Goldstone

    Won
  2. A Flower Traveled in My Blood: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children

    Haley Cohen Gilliland, Haley Cohen Gilliland

    Shortlisted

  3. Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church

    Kevin Sack

    Shortlisted

2025

  1. To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement

    Benjamin Nathans

    Won

  2. I Am on the Hit List: A Journalist's Murder and the Rise of Autocracy in India

    Rollo Romig

    Shortlisted

  3. Until I Find You: Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions in Guatemala

    Rachel Nolan

    Shortlisted

2024

  1. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy

    Nathan Thrall

    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

2023

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

    Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa

    Won
  2. Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern

    Jing Tsu

    Shortlisted
  3. Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction

    David George Haskell

    Shortlisted
  4. Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation

    Linda Villarosa

    Shortlisted

2022

  1. Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City

    Andrea Elliott

    Won

  2. Home, Land, Security: Deradicalization and the Journey Back from Extremism

    Carla Power, Carla Power

    Shortlisted
  3. The Family Roe: An American Story

    Joshua Prager

    Shortlisted

2021

  1. Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

    David Zucchino

    Won

  2. Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

    Cathy Park Hong, Cathy Park Hong

    Shortlisted

  3. Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country

    Sierra Crane Murdoch

    Shortlisted

2020

  1. The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America

    Greg Grandin

    Won
  2. The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care

    Anne Boyer

    Won
  3. Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life

    Louise Aronson

    Shortlisted
  4. Solitary

    Albert Woodfox with Leslie George

    Shortlisted

2019

  1. Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America

    Eliza Griswold

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

    Bernice Yeung

    Shortlisted

  3. Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore

    Elizabeth Rush

    Shortlisted

2018

  1. Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America

    James Forman Jr.

    Won

  2. Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-America World

    Suzy Hansen

    Shortlisted

  3. The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us

    Richard Prum

    Shortlisted

2017

  1. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

    Matthew Desmond

    Won

  2. In a Different Key: The Story of Autism

    John Donvan, Caren Zucker

    Shortlisted

  3. The Politics of Mourning: Death and Honor in Arlington National Cemetery

    Micki McElya

    Shortlisted

2016

  1. Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

    Joby Warrick

    Won
  2. Between the World and Me

    Ta-Nehisi Coates

    Shortlisted
  3. If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran

    Carla Power

    Shortlisted

2015

  1. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

    Elizabeth Kolbert

    Won
  2. Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

    Evan Osnos

    Shortlisted

  3. No Good Men among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes

    Anand Gopal

    Shortlisted

2014

  1. Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation

    Dan Fagin

    Won
  2. The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide

    Gary J. Bass

    Shortlisted

  3. The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War

    Fred Kaplan

    Shortlisted

2013

  1. Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America

    Gilbert King

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

    Katherine Boo

    Shortlisted

  3. The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature

    David G. Haskell

    Shortlisted

2012

  1. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

    Stephen Greenblatt

    Won

  2. One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing

    Diane Ackerman

    Shortlisted
  3. Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men

    Mara Hvistendahl

    Shortlisted

2011

  1. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

    Siddhartha Mukherjee

    Won
  2. Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History

    S. C. Gwynne

    Shortlisted

  3. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

    Nicholas G. Carr

    Shortlisted

2010

  1. The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy

    David E. Hoffman

    Won

  2. How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities

    John Cassidy

    Shortlisted

  3. The Evolution of God

    Robert Wright

    Shortlisted

2009

  1. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II

    Douglas A. Blackmon

    Won

  2. Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age

    Arthur Herman

    Shortlisted

  3. The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe

    William I. Hitchcock

    Shortlisted

2008

  1. The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945

    Saul Friedländer

    Won
  2. The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America

    Allan M. Brandt

    Shortlisted
  3. The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

    Alex Ross

    Shortlisted

2007

  1. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

    Lawrence Wright

    Won
  2. Crazy: A Father's Search through America's Mental Health Madness

    Pete Earley

    Shortlisted
  3. Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

    Thomas E. Ricks

    Shortlisted

2006

  1. Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya

    Caroline Elkins

    Won
  2. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

    Tony Judt

    Shortlisted

  3. The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq

    George Packer

    Shortlisted

2005

  1. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001

    Steve Coll

    Won
  2. Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found

    Suketu Mehta

    Shortlisted

  3. The Devil's Highway: A True Story

    Luis Alberto Urrea

    Shortlisted

2004

  1. Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps

    Anne Applebaum

    Won

  2. Rembrandt's Jews

    Steven Nadler

    Shortlisted

  3. The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military

    Dana Priest

    Shortlisted

2003

  1. A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide

    Samantha Power

    Won

  2. The Anthropology of Turquoise: Meditations on Landscape, Art, and Spirit

    Ellen Meloy

    Shortlisted

  3. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

    Steven Pinker

    Shortlisted

2002

  1. Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution

    Diane McWhorter

    Won
  2. The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

    Andrew Solomon

    Shortlisted

  3. War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals

    David Halberstam

    Shortlisted

2001

  1. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

    Herbert P. Bix

    Won
  2. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

    Dave Eggers

    Shortlisted
  3. Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing

    Ted Conover

    Shortlisted

2000

  1. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

    John Dower

    Won

  2. Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds

    Scott Weidensaul, Scott Weidensaul

    Shortlisted

  3. The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory

    Brian Greene

    Shortlisted

1999

  1. Annals of the Former World

    John McPhee

    Won
  2. Crime and Punishment in America

    Elliott Currie

    Shortlisted

  3. The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do

    Judith Rich Harris

    Shortlisted

1998

  1. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

    Jared Diamond

    Won
  2. How the Mind Works

    Steven Pinker

    Shortlisted
  3. Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster

    Jon Krakauer

    Shortlisted

1997

  1. Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris

    Richard Kluger

    Won
  2. Fame and Folly

    Cynthia Ozick

    Shortlisted

  3. The Inheritance: How Three Families and America Moved from Roosevelt to Reagan and Beyond

    Samuel G. Freedman

    Shortlisted

1996

  1. The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism

    Tina Rosenberg

    Won
  2. Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life

    Daniel Dennett

    Shortlisted

  3. Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology

    Lawrence Weschler

    Shortlisted

1995

  1. The Beak of the Finch: A Story Of Evolution In Our Time

    Jonathan Weiner

    Won
  2. How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter

    Sherwin B. Nuland

    Shortlisted

  3. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story

    John Berendt

    Shortlisted

1994

  1. Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire

    David Remnick

    Won

  2. The Cultivation of Hatred: The Bourgeois Experience, Victoria to Freud

    Peter Gay

    Shortlisted

  3. The End of the Twentieth Century: And the End of the Modern Age

    John Lukacs

    Shortlisted

1993

  1. Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America

    Garry Wills

    Won
  2. A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War

    Susan Griffin

    Shortlisted
  3. Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father

    Richard Rodriguez

    Shortlisted

  4. Where the Buffalo Roam: Restoring America's Great Plains

    Anne Matthews

    Shortlisted

1992

  1. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power

    Daniel Yergin

    Won
  2. Broken Vessels

    Andre Dubus

    Shortlisted
  3. Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics

    Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall

    Shortlisted

1991

  1. The Ants

    Bert Hölldobler, Edward O. Wilson

    Won

  2. Looking for a Ship

    John McPhee

    Shortlisted

  3. River of Traps: A Village Life

    William deBuys, Alex Harris

    Shortlisted

1990

  1. And Their Children after Them

    Dale Maharidge, Michael Williamson

    Won
  2. A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East, 1914-1922

    David Fromkin

    Shortlisted
  3. Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History

    Stephen Jay Gould

    Shortlisted

1989

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

    Neil Sheehan

    Won
  2. Coming of Age in the Milky Way

    Timothy Ferris

    Shortlisted
  3. Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years

    McGeorge Bundy

    Shortlisted

  4. The Last Farmer

    Howard Kohn

    Shortlisted

1988

  1. The Making of the Atomic Bomb

    Richard Rhodes

    Won
  2. Chaos: Making a New Science

    James Gleick

    Shortlisted

  3. Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Society

    Daniel Callahan

    Shortlisted

1987

  1. Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land

    David K. Shipler

    Won

  2. Rain or Shine: A Family Memoir

    Cyra McFadden

    Shortlisted

  3. Rising from the Plains

    John McPhee

    Shortlisted

1986

  1. Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families

    J. Anthony Lukas

    Won

  2. Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White

    Joseph Lelyveld

    Won

  3. Habits and the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life

    Robert N. Bellah

    Shortlisted

1985

  1. "The Good War": An Oral History of World War II

    Studs Terkel

    Won
  2. Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature in the Modern Era

    Donald Keene

    Shortlisted
  3. Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World

    Jonathan Kwitny

    Shortlisted

1984

  1. The Social Transformation of American Medicine

    Paul Starr

    Won
  2. Conversations with the Enemy

    Winston Groom, Duncan Spencer

    Shortlisted

  3. Wild Justice

    Susan Jacoby

    Shortlisted

1983

  1. Is There No Place on Earth for Me?

    Susan Sheehan

    Won

  2. Terrorists and Novelists

    Diane Johnson

    Shortlisted
  3. The Fate of the Earth

    Jonathan Schell

    Shortlisted

1982

  1. The Soul of a New Machine

    Tracy Kidder

    Won
  2. Basin and Range

    John McPhee

    Shortlisted

  3. Mrs. Harris: The Death of the Scarsdale Diet Doctor

    Diana Trilling

    Shortlisted

1981

  1. Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture

    Carl E. Schorske

    Won
  2. China Men

    Maxine Hong Kingston

    Shortlisted

  3. Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War

    William Manchester

    Shortlisted

  4. Southerners: A Journalist's Odyssey

    Marshall Frady

    Shortlisted

1980

  1. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

    Douglas Hofstadter

    Won

  2. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination

    Sandra Gilbert, Susan Gubar

    Shortlisted
  3. The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher

    Lewis Thomas

    Shortlisted

1979

  1. On Human Nature

    Edward O. Wilson

    Won

1978

  1. The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

    Carl Sagan

    Won

1977

  1. Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay

    William W. Warner

    Won

1976

  1. Why Survive?: Being Old in America

    Robert N. Butler

    Won

1975

  1. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

    Annie Dillard

    Won

1974

  1. The Denial of Death

    Ernest Becker, Ernest Becker

    Won

1973

  1. Children of Crisis, Volumes II and III

    Robert Coles

    Won
  2. Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam

    Frances FitzGerald

    Won

1972

  1. Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–1945

    Barbara W. Tuchman

    Won

1971

  1. The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945

    John Toland

    Won

1970

  1. Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence

    Erik Erikson

    Won

1969

  1. So Human an Animal: How We Are Shaped by Surroundings and Events

    René Dubos

    Won
  2. The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History

    Norman Mailer

    Won

1968

  1. The Story of Civilization: Rousseau and Revolution

    Ariel Durant, Will Durant

    Won

1967

  1. The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture

    David Brion Davis

    Won

1966

  1. Wandering through Winter: A Naturalist's Record of a 20,000-Mile Journey through the North American Winter

    Edwin Way Teale

    Won

1965

  1. O Strange New World: American Culture, the Formative Years

    Howard Mumford Jones

    Won

1964

  1. Anti-intellectualism in American Life

    Richard Hofstadter

    Won

1963

  1. The Guns of August

    Barbara W. Tuchman

    Won

1962

  1. The Making of the President 1960

    Theodore H. White

    Won