Every National Book Award for Nonfiction winner, 1950–2025

The National Book Award for Nonfiction has gone to 64 books since 1950. Given by the National Book Foundation to a nonfiction book by a U.S. citizen. From 1964 to 1979 nonfiction was judged in subject categories with no general award, and from 1980 to 1983 general nonfiction had separate hardcover and paperback awards. The latest winner is One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad (2025). Of the 16 winners on ReadingRate, the most readable is The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen (difficulty 24/100, about 3.4 hours); the hardest is China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston (66/100). The quickest of them to finish is Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, at about 2.5 hours.

How book difficulty is measured

2025

• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad — difficulty 30/100, about 3.2 hours
• Motherland by Julia Ioffe — finalist
• Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li — finalist
• Wards of the State by Claudia Rowe — finalist
• When It All Burns by Jordan Thomas — finalist
• Black Moses by Caleb Gayle — longlist
• For the Sun After Long Nights by Fatemeh Jamalpour and Nilo Tabrizy — longlist
• The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam by Lana Lin — longlist
• Run the Song by Ben Ratliff — longlist
• The Salt Stones by Helen Whybrow — longlist

2024

• Soldiers and Kings by Jason De León
• Circle of Hope by Eliza Griswold — finalist
• Unshrinking by Kate Manne — finalist
• Knife by Salman Rushdie — finalist
• Whiskey Tender by Deborah Jackson Taffa — finalist
• There's Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib — longlist
• Magical/Realism by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal — longlist
• Our Moon by Rebecca Boyle — longlist
• The War Below by Ernest Scheyder — longlist
• A Great Disorder by Richard Slotkin — longlist

2023

• The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk — difficulty 40/100, about 10 hours
• Liliana's Invincible Summer by Cristina Rivera Garza — finalist
• Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe — finalist
• We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I by Raja Shehadeh — finalist
• Fire Weather by John Vaillant — finalist
• King: A Life by Jonathan Eig — longlist
• A Man of Two Faces by Viet Thanh Nguyen — longlist
• The Slip by Prudence Peiffer — longlist
• When Crack Was King by Donovan X. Ramsey — longlist
• I Saw Death Coming by Kidada E. Williams — longlist

2022

• South to America by Imani Perry
• The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O'Rourke — finalist
• Breathless by David Quammen — finalist
• The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras — finalist
• His Name Is George Floyd by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa — finalist
• Bright Unbearable Reality by Anna Badkhen — longlist
• Ted Kennedy: A Life by John A. Farrell — longlist
• Uncommon Measure by Natalie Hodges — longlist
• Bad Mexicans by Kelly Lytle Hernández — longlist
• Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz — longlist

2021

• All That She Carried by Tiya Miles
• A Little Devil in America by Hanif Abdurraqib — finalist
• Running Out by Lucas Bessire — finalist
• Tastes Like War by Grace M. Cho — finalist
• Covered with Night by Nicole Eustace — finalist
• The Ground Breaking by Scott Ellsworth — longlist
• The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee — longlist
• The Free World by Louis Menand — longlist
• How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith — longlist
• The Black Civil War Soldier by Deborah Willis — longlist

2020

• The Dead Are Arising by Les Payne and Tamara Payne
• Unworthy Republic by Claudio Saunt — finalist
• My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland — finalist
• The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio — finalist
• How to Make a Slave and Other Essays by Jerald Walker — finalist
• Is Rape a Crime? by Michelle Bowdler — longlist
• If Then by Jill Lepore — longlist
• Owls of the Eastern Ice by Jonathan C. Slaght — longlist
• Afropessimism by Frank B. Wilderson III — longlist
• Caste by Isabel Wilkerson — longlist

2019

• The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom
• Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom — finalist
• What You Have Heard Is True by Carolyn Forché — finalist
• The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer — finalist
• Solitary by Albert Woodfox and Leslie George — finalist
• Go Ahead in the Rain by Hanif Abdurraqib — longlist
• The End of the Myth by Greg Grandin — longlist
• Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe — longlist
• Burn the Place by Iliana Regan — longlist
• Race for Profit by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor — longlist

2018

• The New Negro by Jeffrey C. Stewart
• The Indian World of George Washington by Colin G. Calloway — finalist
• American Eden by Victoria Johnson — finalist
• Heartland by Sarah Smarsh — finalist
• We the Corporations by Adam Winkler — finalist
• One Person, No Vote by Carol Anderson — longlist
• Directorate S by Steve Coll — longlist
• Brothers of the Gun by Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple — longlist
• The Tangled Tree by David Quammen — longlist
• Call Them by Their True Names by Rebecca Solnit — longlist

2017

• The Future Is History by Masha Gessen
• Never Caught by Erica Armstrong Dunbar — finalist
• The Evangelicals by Frances FitzGerald — finalist
• Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann — finalist
• Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean — finalist
• Locking Up Our Own by James Forman Jr. — longlist
• No Is Not Enough by Naomi Klein — longlist
• The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein — longlist
• The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson — longlist
• Bunk by Kevin Young — longlist

2016

• Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi — difficulty 32/100, about 9.9 hours
• Strangers in Their Own Land by Arlie Russell Hochschild — finalist
• Nothing Ever Dies by Viet Thanh Nguyen — finalist
• The Other Slavery by Andrés Reséndez — finalist
• Blood in the Water by Heather Ann Thompson — finalist
• America's War for the Greater Middle East by Andrew J. Bacevich — longlist
• The Firebrand and the First Lady by Patricia Bell-Scott — longlist
• Imbeciles by Adam Cohen — longlist
• Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil — longlist
• The Slave's Cause by Manisha Sinha — longlist

2015

• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates — difficulty 50/100, about 2.5 hours
• Hold Still by Sally Mann — finalist
• The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery — finalist
• If the Oceans Were Ink by Carla Power — finalist
• Ordinary Light by Tracy K. Smith — finalist
• Rain by Cynthia Barnett — longlist
• Mourning Lincoln by Martha Hodes — longlist
• Paradise of the Pacific by Susanna Moore — longlist
• Love and Other Ways of Dying by Michael Paterniti — longlist
• Travels in Vermeer by Michael White — longlist

2014

• Age of Ambition by Evan Osnos
• Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast — finalist
• No Good Men Among the Living by Anand Gopal — finalist
• Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr — finalist
• The Meaning of Human Existence by E. O. Wilson — finalist
• The Heathen School by John Demos — longlist
• The Mantle of Command by Nigel Hamilton — longlist
• The Innovators by Walter Isaacson — longlist
• When Paris Went Dark by Ronald C. Rosbottom — longlist
• Nature's God by Matthew Stewart — longlist

2013

• The Unwinding by George Packer
• Book of Ages by Jill Lepore — finalist
• Hitler's Furies by Wendy Lower — finalist
• The Internal Enemy by Alan Taylor — finalist
• Going Clear by Lawrence Wright — finalist
• The Wolf and the Watchman by Scott C. Johnson — longlist
• Finding Florida by T. D. Allman — longlist
• Facing the Wave by Gretel Ehrlich — longlist
• Freedom National by James Oakes — longlist
• Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington by Terry Teachout — longlist

2012

• Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo — difficulty 29/100, about 4.2 hours
• Iron Curtain by Anne Applebaum — finalist
• The Passage of Power by Robert A. Caro — finalist
• The Boy Kings of Texas by Domingo Martinez — finalist
• House of Stone by Anthony Shadid — finalist

2011

• The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt
• The Convert by Deborah Baker — finalist
• Love and Capital by Mary Gabriel — finalist
• Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable — finalist
• Radioactive by Lauren Redniss — finalist

2010

• Just Kids by Patti Smith — difficulty 25/100, about 3.9 hours
• Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick — finalist
• Cultures of War by John W. Dower — finalist
• Secret Historian by Justin Spring — finalist
• Every Man in This Village Is a Liar by Megan K. Stack — finalist

2009

• The First Tycoon by T. J. Stiles
• Following the Water by David M. Carroll — finalist
• Remarkable Creatures by Sean B. Carroll — finalist
• Fordlândia by Greg Grandin — finalist
• The Poison King by Adrienne Mayor — finalist

2008

• The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed
• This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust — finalist
• The Dark Side by Jane Mayer — finalist
• Final Salute by Jim Sheeler — finalist
• The Suicide Index by Joan Wickersham — finalist

2007

• Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner
• Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat — finalist
• God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens — finalist
• Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution by Woody Holton — finalist
• Ralph Ellison: A Biography by Arnold Rampersad — finalist

2006

• The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
• At Canaan's Edge by Taylor Branch — finalist
• Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran — finalist
• Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler — finalist
• The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright — finalist

2005

• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion — difficulty 51/100, about 3.4 hours
• Out of Eden by Alan Burdick — finalist
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius by Leo Damrosch — finalist
• 102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn — finalist
• Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild — finalist

2004

• Arc of Justice by Kevin Boyle
• Washington's Crossing by David Hackett Fischer — finalist
• Life on the Outside by Jennifer Gonnerman — finalist
• Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt — finalist
• The 9/11 Commission Report by 9/11 Commission — finalist

2003

• Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire
• Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum — finalist
• The Big House by George Howe Colt — finalist
• Lost Prophet by John D'Emilio — finalist
• The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson — finalist

2002

• Master of the Senate by Robert A. Caro
• When Smoke Ran Like Water by Devra Davis — finalist
• Complications by Atul Gawande — finalist
• The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert — finalist
• Mapping Human History by Steve Olson — finalist

2001

• The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon — difficulty 54/100, about 17 hours
• American Chica by Marie Arana — finalist
• The Lost Children of Wilder by Nina Bernstein — finalist
• My Story as Told by Water by David James Duncan — finalist
• Neighbors by Jan T. Gross — finalist

2000

• In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick
• From Dawn to Decadence by Jacques Barzun — finalist
• The Collaborator by Alice Kaplan — finalist
• W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963 by David Levering Lewis — finalist
• Darkness in El Dorado by Patrick Tierney — finalist

1999

• Embracing Defeat by John W. Dower — difficulty 30/100, about 11 hours
• Woman: An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier — finalist
• Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden — finalist
• Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation by John Phillip Santos — finalist
• Secrets of the Flesh by Judith Thurman — finalist

1998

• Slaves in the Family by Edward Ball
• Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom — finalist
• There Once Was a World by Yaffa Eliach — finalist
• A Slant of Sun by Beth Kephart — finalist
• All on Fire by Henry Mayer — finalist

1997

• American Sphinx by Joseph J. Ellis
• The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara by David I. Kertzer — finalist
• My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid — finalist
• The Undertaking by Thomas Lynch — finalist
• Whittaker Chambers: A Biography by Sam Tanenhaus — finalist

1996

• An American Requiem by James P. Carroll
• The Temple Bombing by Melissa Fay Greene — finalist
• The Living and the Dead by Paul Hendrickson — finalist
• The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller by Cary Reich — finalist
• Fruitful by Anne Roiphe — finalist

1995

• The Haunted Land by Tina Rosenberg
• Salvation on Sand Mountain by Dennis Covington — finalist
• Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett — finalist
• A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr — finalist
• Ghosts of Mississippi by Maryanne Vollers — finalist

1994

• How We Die by Sherwin B. Nuland — difficulty 40/100, about 6.5 hours
• The Unredeemed Captive by John Putnam Demos — finalist
• Strange Justice by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson — finalist
• Fatheralong by John Edgar Wideman — finalist
• In Pharaoh's Army by Tobias Wolff — finalist

1993

• United States: Essays 1952–1992 by Gore Vidal
• Land of Desire by William Leach — finalist
• W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 by David Levering Lewis — finalist
• Gunfighter Nation by Richard Slotkin — finalist
• Battlefield by Peter Svenson — finalist

1992

• Becoming a Man by Paul Monette
• The Promise of the New South by Edward L. Ayers — finalist
• Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick — finalist
• Truman by David McCullough — finalist
• Lincoln at Gettysburg by Garry Wills — finalist

1991

• Freedom in the Making of Western Culture by Orlando Patterson
• Why Americans Hate Politics by E. J. Dionne Jr. — finalist
• Praying for Sheetrock by Melissa Fay Greene — finalist
• The Jameses by R. W. B. Lewis — finalist
• Anne Sexton: A Biography by Diane Wood Middlebrook — finalist

1990

• The House of Morgan by Ron Chernow
• Small Victories by Samuel G. Freedman — finalist
• Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician by Roger Morris — finalist
• Jackson Pollock: An American Saga by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith — finalist
• Righteous Pilgrim by T. H. Watkins — finalist

1989

• From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas L. Friedman
• Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch — finalist
• Danger and Survival by McGeorge Bundy — finalist
• Barbarian Sentiments by William Pfaff — finalist
• Mother Country by Marilynne Robinson — finalist

1988

• A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan
• Reconstruction by Eric Foner — finalist
• Freud: A Life for Our Time by Peter Gay — finalist
• Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom by Brenda Maddox — finalist
• Jefferson and Monticello by Jack McLaughlin — finalist

1987

• The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
• Look Homeward by David Herbert Donald — finalist
• Chaos by James Gleick — finalist
• Mothers in the Fatherland by Claudia Koonz — finalist
• New York 1930 by Robert A. M. Stern and Gregory Gilmartin and Thomas Mellins — finalist

1986

• Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez
• War Without Mercy by John W. Dower — finalist
• The Paper by Richard Kluger — finalist
• The Young Hemingway by Michael S. Reynolds — finalist
• Tombee by Theodore Rosengarten — finalist

1985

• Common Ground by J. Anthony Lukas
• In the Name of Eugenics by Daniel J. Kevles — finalist
• ...the Heavens and the Earth by Walter A. McDougall — finalist

1984

• Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833–1845 by Robert V. Remini
• Becoming William James by Howard M. Feinstein — finalist
• Thomas More: A Biography by Richard Marius — finalist
• The Nightmare of Reason by Ernst Pawel — finalist
• One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty — finalist

1983

• China: Alive in the Bitter Sea by Fox Butterfield — hardcover
• National Defense by James Fallows — paperback
• The Nuclear Delusion by George F. Kennan — finalist
• Indecent Exposure by David McClintick — finalist
• The Fate of the Earth by Jonathan Schell — finalist
• Is There No Place on Earth for Me? by Susan Sheehan — finalist
• Joe McCarthy and the Press by Edwin R. Bayley — finalist
• Abroad by Paul Fussell — finalist
• Everything We Had by Al Santoli — finalist
• Pioneer Women by Joanna Stratton — finalist

1982

• The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder — hardcover
• Naming Names by Victor S. Navasky — paperback
• The Geography of the Imagination by Guy Davenport — finalist
• National Defense by James Fallows — finalist
• Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession by Janet Malcolm — finalist
• Russian Journal by Andrea Lee — finalist
• Anatomy of an Illness As Perceived by the Patient by Norman Cousins — finalist
• African Calliope by Edward Hoagland — finalist
• Great Expectations by Landon Jones — finalist
• Nature and Culture by Barbara Novak — finalist

1981

• China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston — difficulty 66/100, about 11 hours, hardcover
• The Last Cowboy by Jane Kramer — paperback
• The Dream of the Golden Mountains by Malcolm Cowley — finalist
• From a Limestone Ledge by John Graves — finalist
• Naming Names by Victor S. Navasky — finalist
• American Dreams by Studs Terkel — finalist
• The White Album by Joan Didion — finalist
• The Powers That Be by David Halberstam — finalist
• Merchants of Grain by Dan Morgan — finalist
• The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux — finalist

1980

• The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe — difficulty 33/100, about 8.2 hours, hardcover
• The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen — difficulty 24/100, about 3.4 hours, paperback
• America Revised by Frances FitzGerald — finalist
• The Powers That Be by David Halberstam — finalist
• A Nervous Splendor by Frederic Morton — finalist
• The Man Who Kept the Secrets by Thomas Powers — finalist
• Lying by Sissela Bok — finalist
• Of Wolves and Men by Barry Lopez — finalist
• Kids: Day In and Day Out by Elizabeth L. Scharlatt — finalist

1963

• Henry James by Leon Edel

1962

• The City in History by Lewis Mumford

1961

• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer — difficulty 26/100, about 25 hours

1960

• James Joyce by Richard Ellmann — difficulty 40/100, about 21 hours

1959

• Mistress to an Age by J. Christopher Herold

1958

• The Lion and the Throne by Catherine Drinker Bowen

1957

• Russia Leaves the War by George F. Kennan

1956

• An American in Italy by Herbert Kubly

1955

• The Measure of Man by Joseph Wood Krutch

1954

• A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton

1953

• The Course of Empire by Bernard DeVoto

1952

• The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson — difficulty 25/100, about 3.5 hours

1951

• Herman Melville by Newton Arvin

1950

• The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph L. Rusk
• The Universe and Dr. Einstein by Lincoln Barnett — finalist
• The Mature Mind by Harry Allen Overstreet — finalist
• This I Remember by Eleanor Roosevelt — finalist
• Killers of the Dream by Lillian Smith — finalist
• Lincoln Finds a General by Kenneth P. Williams — finalist

Questions

Who won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2025?

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad.

Which National Book Award for Nonfiction winner should I read first?

For the gentlest start, The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen: the easiest of the 16 winners on ReadingRate to read, with a difficulty of 24/100 and about 3.4 hours of reading. For the quickest, Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, about 2.5 hours.

Which National Book Award for Nonfiction winner is the hardest to read?

China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston, with a difficulty of 66/100; it takes about 11 hours.

Winners from Wikipedia, checked 2026-10-31.

Other prizes: Nobel Prize in Literature, Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, International Booker Prize, National Book Award for Fiction, Women's Prize for Fiction, Hugo Award for Best Novel, Nebula Award for Best Novel, Prix Goncourt, Dublin Literary Award, PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, Costa Novel Award, Albert J. Beveridge Award, Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction. Every literary prize; every winner of 2026.