2007
The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher by Debby Applegate

2006
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

2005
de Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan

2004
Khrushchev: The Man and His Era by William Taubman

2003
Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro

2002
John Adams by David McCullough

2001
W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963 by David Levering Lewis

2000
Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff

1999
Lindbergh by A. Scott Berg

1998
Personal History by Katharine Graham

1997
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt

1996
God: A Biography by Jack Miles

1995
Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life by Joan D. Hedrick

1994
W.E.B. DuBois by David L. Lewis

1993
Truman by David McCullough

1992
Fortunate Son by Lewis B. Puller, Jr.

1991
Jackson Pollock by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith

1990
Machiavelli in Hell by Sebastian de Grazia

1989
Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellmann

1988
Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe by David Herbert Donald

1987
Bearing the Cross by David J. Garrow

1986
Louise Bogan: A Portrait by Elizabeth Frank

1985
The Life and Times of Cotton Mather by Kenneth Silverman

1984
Booker T. Washington by Louis R. Harlan

1983
Growing Up by Russell Baker

1982
Grant: A Biography by William McFeely

1981
Peter the Great: His Life and World by Robert K. Massie

1980
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

1979
Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews by Leonard Baker

1978
Samuel Johnson by Walter Jackson Bate

1977
A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence by John E. Mack

1976
Edith Wharton: A Biography by R.W.B. Lewis

1975
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro

1974
O'Neill, Son and Artist by Louis Sheaffer

1973
Luce and His Empire by W.A. Swanberg

1972
Eleanor and Franklin by Joseph P. Lash

1971
Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 1915 -1938 by Lawrence Thompson

1970
Huey Long by T. Harry Williams

1969
The Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends by Benjamin Lawrence Reid

1968
Memoirs by George E. Kennan

1967
Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain by Justin Kaplan

1966
A Thousand Days by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

1965
Henry Adams by Ernest Samuels

1964
John Keats by Walter Jackson Bate

1963
Henry James by Leon Edel

1962
No Award

1961
Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War by David Donald

1960
John Paul Jones by Samuel Eliot Morison

1959
Woodrow Wilson, American Prophet by Arthur Walworth

1958
George Washington, Volumes I-VI, by Douglas Southall Freeman, and Volume VII by John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth

1957
Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy

1956
Benjamin Henry Latrobe by Talbot Faulkner Hamlin

1955
The Taft Story by William S. White

1954
The Spirit of St. Louis by Charles A. Lindbergh

1953
Edmund Pendleton 1721-1803 by David J. Mays

1952
Charles Evans Hughes by Merlo J. Pusey

1951
John C. Calhoun: American Portrait by Margaret Louise Coit

1950
John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy by Samuel Flagg Bemis
 

2007
The Road by Cormac McCarthy

2006
March by Geraldine Brooks

2005
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

2004
The Known World by Edward P. Jones

2003
Middlesex: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides

2002
Empire Falls by Richard Russo

2001
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

2000
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

1999
The Hours by Michael Cunningham

1998
American Pastoral by Philip Roth

1997
Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser

1996
Independence Day by Richard Ford

1995
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

1994
The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

1993
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler

1992
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

1991
Rabbit at Rest by John Updike

1990
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos

1989
Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler

1988
Beloved by Toni Morrison

1987
A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor

1986
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

1985
Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie

1984
Ironweed by William Kennedy

1983
The Color Purple by Alice Walker

1982
Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike

1981
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

1980
The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer

1979
The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever

1978
Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson

1977
No Award

1976
Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

1975
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

1974
No Award

1973
The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty

1972
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

1971
No Award

1970
Collected Stories by Jean Stafford

1969
House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday

1968
The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron

1967
The Fixer by Bernard Malamud

1966
Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter

1965
The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau

1964
No Award

1963
The Reivers by William Faulkner

1962
The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor

1961
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

1960
Advise and Consent by Allen Drury

1959
The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor

1958
A Death in the Family by James Agee

1957
No Award

1956
Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor

1955
A Fable by William Faulkner

1954
No Award

1953
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

1952
The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

1951
The Town by Conrad Richter

1950
The Way West by A.B. Guthrie, Jr.
 

2007
The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff

2006
Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky

2005
Washington’s Crossing by David Hackett Fischer

2004
A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration by Steven Hahn

2003
An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson

2002
The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand

2001
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis

2000
Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 by David M. Kennedy

1999
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace

1998
Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion by Edward J. Larson

1997
Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution by Jack N. Rakove

1996
William Cooper's Town by Alan Taylor

1995
No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin

1994
No Award

1993
The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood

1992
The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties by Mark E. Neely, Jr.

1991
A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

1990
In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines by Stanley Karnow

1989
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson

1988
The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846-1976 by Robert Bruce

1987
Voyagers to the West by Bernard Bailyn

1986
The Heavens and the Earth by Walter A. McDougall

1985
Prophets of Regulation by Thomas K. McCraw

1984
No Award

1983
The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 by Rhys L. Isaac

1982
Mary Chesnut's Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward

1981
American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876 by Lawrence A. Cremin

1980
Been in the Storm So Long by Leon F. Litwack

1979
The Dred Scott Case by Don E. Fehrenbacher

1978
The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.

1977
The Impending Crisis, 1841-1867 by David M. Potter (finished by Don E. Fehrenbacher)

1976
Lamy of Santa Fe by Paul Horgan

1975
Jefferson and His Time, Vols. I-V by Dumas Malone

1974
The Americans: The Democratic Experience by Daniel J. Boorstin

1973
People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization by Michael Kammen

1972
Neither Black Nor White by Carl N. Degler

1971
Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom by James MacGregor Burns

1970
Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department by Dean Acheson

1969
Origins of the Fifth Amendment by Leonard W. Levy

1968
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn

1967
Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West by William H. Goetzmann

1966
The Life of the Mind in America by Perry Miller

1965
The Greenback Era by Irwin Unger

1964
Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town by Sumner Chilton Powell

1963
Washington, Village and Capital, 1800-1878 by Constance McLaughlin Green

1962
The Triumphant Empire: Thunderclouds Gather in the West, 1763-1766 by Lawrence H. Gipson

1961
Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference by Herbert Feis

1960
In the Days of McKinley by Margaret Leech

1959
The Republican Era: l869-1901 by Leonard D. White, with Jean Schneider

1958
Banks and Politics in America by Bray Hammond

1957
Russia Leaves the War: Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920 by George F. Kennan

1956
The Age of Reform by Richard Hofstadter

1955
Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History by Paul Horgan

1954
A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton

1953
The Era of Good Feelings by George Dangerfield

1952
The Uprooted by Oscar Handlin

1951
The Old Northwest, Pioneer Period 1815-1840 by R. Carlyle Buley

1950
Art and Life in America by Oliver W. Larkin
 

2007
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright

2006
Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins

2005
Ghost Wars by Steve Coll

2004
Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum

2003
"A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power

2002
Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution by Diane McWhorter

2001
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix

2000
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower

1999
Annals of the Former World by John McPhee

1998
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

1997
Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris by Richard Kluger

1996
The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts after Communism by Tina Rosenberg

1995
The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner

1994
Lenin's Tomb by David Remnick

1993
Lincoln at Gettysburg by Garry Wills

1992
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power by Daniel Yergin

1991
The Ants by Bert Holldobler and Edward O. Wilson

1990
And Their Children after Them by Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson

1989
A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan

1988
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

1987
Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land by David K. Shipler

1986
Common Ground by J. Anthony Lukas

1985
The Good War by Studs Terkel

1984
The Social Transformation of American Medicine by Paul Starr

1983
Is There No Place on Earth for Me? by Susan Sheehan

1982
The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder

1981
Fin-De-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture by Carl E. Schorske

1980
Godel, Escher, Baeh: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter

1979
On Human Nature by Edward O. Wilson

1978
The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan

1977
Beautiful Swimmers by William W. Warner

1976
Why Survive? Being Old in America by Robert N. Butler

1975
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

1974
The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker

1973
Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam by Frances Fitzgerald

1972
Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 by Barbara W. Tuchm

1971
The Rising Sun by John Toland

1970
Gandhi's Truth by Erik H. Erikson

1969
The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer

1968
Rousseau and Revolution, The Tenth and Concluding Volume of the Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant

1967
The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture by David Brion Davis

1966
Wandering through Winter by Edwin Way Teale

1965
O Strange New World by Howard Mumford Jones

1964
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter

1963
The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman

1962
The Making of the President, 1960 by Theodore H. White

1961
No Award prior to 1962
 

2007
Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey

2006
Late Wife by Claudia Emerson

2005
Delights & Shadows by Ted Kooser

2004
Walking to Martha's Vineyard by Franz Wright

2003
Moy Sand and Gravel: Poems by Paul Muldoon

2002
Practical Gods by Carl Dennis

2001
Different Hours by Stephen Dunn

2000
Repair by C.K. Williams

1999
Blizzard of One by Mark Strand

1998
Black Zodiac by Charles Wright

1997
Alive Together: New and Selected Poems by Lisel Mueller

1996
The Dream of the Unified Field by Jorie Graham

1995
The Simple Truth by Philip Levine

1994
Neon Vernacular by Yusef Komunyakaa

1993
The Wild Iris by Louise Gluck

1992
Selected Poems by James Tate

1991
Near Changes by Mona Van Duyn

1990
The World Doesn't End by Charles Simic

1989
New and Collected Poems by Richard Wilbur

1988
Partial Accounts by William Meredith

1987
Thomas and Beulah by Rita Dove

1986
The Flying Change by Henry Taylor

1985
Yin by Carolyn Kizer

1984
American Primitive by Mary Oliver

1983
Selected Poems by Galway Kinnell

1982
The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath

1981
The Morning of the Poem by James Schuyler

1980
Selected Poems by Donald Justice

1979
Now and Then by Robert Penn Warren

1978
Collected Poems by Howard Nemerov

1977
Divine Comedies by James Merrill

1976
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery

1975
Turtle Island by Gary Snyder

1974
The Dolphin by Robert Lowell

1973
Up Country by Maxine Kumin

1972
Collected Poems by James Wright

1971
The Carrier of Ladders by William S. Merwin

1970
Untitled Subjects by Richard Howard

1969
Of Being Numerous by George Oppen

1968
The Hard Hours by Anthony Hecht

1967
Live or Die by Anne Sexton

1966
Selected Poems by Richard Eberhart

1965
77 Dream Songs  by John Berryman

1964
At the End of the Open Road by Louis Simpson

1963
Pictures from Breughel by William Carlos Williams

1962
Poems by Alan Dugan

1961
Times Three: Selected Verse from Three Decades by Phyllis McGinley

1960
Heart's Needle by W.D. Snodgrass

1959
Selected Poems 1928-1958 by Stanley Kunitz

1958
Promises: Poems 1954-1956 by Robert Penn Warren

1957
Things of This World by Richard Wilbur

1956
Poems--North & South by Elizabeth Bishop

1955
Collected Poems by Wallace Stevens

1954
The Waking by Theodore Roethke

1953
Collected Poems 1917-1952 by Archibald MacLeish

1952
Collected Poems by Marianne Moore

1951
Complete Poems by Carl Sandburg

1950
Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks
 

2007
Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire

2006
NO AWARD

2005
Doubt, a parable by John Patrick Shanley

2004
I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright

2003
Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz

2002
Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks

2001 Proof by David Auburn

2000 Dinner With Friends by Donald Margulies

1999 Wit by Margaret Edson

1998 How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel

1997 (No Award)

1996 Rent by the late Jonathan Larson

1995 The Young Man From Atlanta by Horton Foote

1994 Three Tall Women by Edward Albee

1993 Angels in America: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner

1992 The Kentucky Cycle by Robert Schenkkan

1991 Lost in Yonkers by Neil Simon

1990 The Piano Lesson by August Wilson

1989 The Heidi Chronicles by Wendy Wasserstein

1988 Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry

1987 Fences by August Wilson

1986 (No Award)

1985 Sunday in the Park With George by Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by James Lapine

1984 Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet

1983 'Night, Mother by Marsha Norman

1982 A Soldier's Play by Charles Fuller

1981 Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley

1980 Talley's Folly by Lanford Wilson

1979 Buried Child by Sam Shepard

1978 The Gin Game by Donald L. Coburn

1977 The Shadow Box by Michael Cristofer

1976 A Chorus Line by Conceived, choreographed and directed by Michael Bennett, with book by James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante, music by Marvin Hamlisch, and lyrics by Edward Kleban

1975 Seascape by Edward Albee

1974 (No Award)

1973 That Championship Season by Jason Miller

1972 (No Award)

1971 The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds by Paul Zindel

1970 No Place To Be Somebody by Charles Gordone

1969 The Great White Hope by Howard Sackler

1968 (No Award)

1967 A Delicate Balance by Edward Albee

1966 (No Award)

1965 The Subject Was Roses by Frank D. Gilroy

1964 (No Award)

1963 (No Award)

1962 How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying by Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows

1961 All The Way Home by Tad Mosel

1960 Fiorello! by Book by Jerome Weidman and George Abbott, Music by Jerry Bock and Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick

1959 J. B. by Archibald Macleish

1958 Look Homeward, Angel by Ketti Frings

1957 Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill

1956 Diary of Anne Frank by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich

1955 Cat on A Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams

1954 The Teahouse of the August Moon by John Patrick

1953 Picnic by William Inge

1952 The Shrike by Joseph Kramm

1951 (No Award)

1950 South Pacific by Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, 2nd and Joshua Logan

1949 Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

1948 A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

1947 (No Award)

1946 State of the Union by Russel Crouse and Howard Lindsay

1945 Harvey by Mary Chase

1944 (No Award)

1943 The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder

1942 (No Award)

1941 There Shall Be No Night by Robert E. Sherwood

1940 The Time of Your Life by William Saroyan

1939 Abe Lincoln in Illinois by Robert E. Sherwood

1938 Our Town by Thornton Wilder

1937 You Can't Take It With You by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman

1936 Idiots Delight by Robert E. Sherwood

1935 The Old Maid by Zoe Akins

1934 Men in White by Sidney Kingsley

1933 Both Your Houses by Maxwell Anderson

1932 Of Thee I Sing by George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind and Ira Gershwin

1931 Alison's House by Susan Glaspell

1930 The Green Pastures by Marc Connelly

1929 Street Scene by Elmer L. Rice

1928 Strange Interlude by Eugene O'Neill

1927 In Abraham's Bosom by Paul Green

1926 Craig's Wife by George Kelly

1925 They Knew What They Wanted by Sidney Howard

1924 Hell-Bent Fer Heaven by Hatcher Hughes

1923 Icebound by Owen Davis

1922 Anna Christie by Eugene O'Neill

1921 Miss Lulu Bett by Zona Gale

1920 Beyond the Horizon by Eugene O'Neill

1919 (No Award)

1918 Why Marry? by Jesse Lynch Williams

1917 (No Award)