| Year |
Title |
Author |
| 2009 |
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt |
T. J. Stiles |
| 2008 |
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family |
Annette Gordon-Reed |
| 2007 |
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA |
Tim Weiner |
| 2006 |
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl |
Timothy Egan |
| 2005 |
The Year of Magical Thinking |
Joan Didion |
| 2004 |
Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age |
Kevin Boyle |
| 2002 |
Master of the Senate |
Robert Caro |
| 2001 |
The Noonday Demon |
Andrew Solomon |
| 2000 |
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex |
Martahnial Philbrick |
| 1999 |
Embracing defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II |
John W. Dower |
| 1998 |
Slaves in the Family |
Edward Ball |
| 1997 |
American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson |
Joseph J. Ellis |
| 1996 |
An American Requiem: God, My Father and the War That Came Between Us |
James Carroll |
| 1995 |
The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism |
Tina Rosenberg |
| 1994 |
How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter |
Sherwin B. Nuland |
| 1993 |
United States: Essays, 1952-1992 |
Gore Vidal |
| 1992 |
Becoming a Man: Half a Life |
Paul Monette |
| 1991 |
Freedom |
Orlando Patterson |
| 1990 |
The House of Morgan |
Ron Chernow |
| 1989 |
From Beirut to Jerusalem |
Thomas L. Friedman |
| 1988 |
A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam |
Neil Sheehan |
| 1987 |
The Making of the Atomic Bomb |
Richard Rhodes |
| 1986 |
Arctic Dreams |
Barry Lopez |
| 1985 |
Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families |
J. Anthony Lucas |
| 1984 |
Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833-45, Vol. 5 |
Robert V. Remini |
| 1983 |
China: Alive in the Bitter Sea |
Fox Butterfield |
| 1982 |
The Soul of a New Machine |
Tracy Kidder |
| 1981 |
China Men |
Maxine Hong Kingston |
| 1980 |
The Right Stuff |
Tom Wolfe |
| 1979 |
Robert Kennedy and His Times |
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr |
| 1978 |
Samuel Johnson |
Walter Jackson Bate |
| 1977 |
The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales |
Bruno Bettleheim |
| 1976 |
The Great War and Modern Memory |
Paul Fussell |
| 1975 |
The Life of Emily Dickinson |
Richard B. Sewall |
| 1974 |
The Lives of a Cell |
Lewis Thomas |
| 1973 |
Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam |
Frances Fitzgerald |
| 1972 |
Eleanor and Franklin |
Joseph P. Lash |
| 1971 |
Roosevelt, The Soldier of Freedom |
James MacGregor Burns |
| 1970 |
An Unfinished Woman, a Memoir |
Lillian Hellman |
| 1969 |
The Armies of the Night |
Norman Mailer |
| 1968 |
Death at an Early Age |
Jonathan Kozol |
| 1967 |
Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain |
Justin Kaplan |
| 1966 |
A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House |
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr |
| 1965 |
The Life of Lenin |
Louis Fisher |
| 1964 |
John Keats: The Making of a Poet |
Aileen Ward |
| 1963 |
Henry James, Vol. 2 & 3 |
Leon Edel |
| 1962 |
The City in History |
Lewis Mumford |
| 1961 |
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich |
William L. Shirer |
| 1960 |
James Joyce |
Richard Ellman |
| 1959 |
Mistress to an Age |
J. Christopher Herold |
| 1958 |
The Lion and the Throne |
Catherine Drinker Bowen |
| 1957 |
Russia Leaves the War |
George F. Kennan |
| 1956 |
An American in Italy |
Herbert Kubly |
| 1955 |
The Measure of a Man |
Joseph Wood Krutch |
| 1953 |
Course of Empire |
Richard DeVoto |
| 1952 |
The Sea Around Us |
Rachel Carson |
| 1951 |
Herman Melville |
Newton Arvin |
| 1950 |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
Ralph L. Rusk |
