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National Book Awards
Presented annually in the USA, by the National Book Foundation, to recognize achievements in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and young people's literature.
For more information see: The National Book Award Home Page
Click on the titles below to search the catalog
| Year | Category | Title | Author |
| 2007 | Fiction | Tree of Smoke | Denis Johnson |
| Nonfiction | Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA | Tim Weiner | |
| Poetry | Time and Materials: Poems, 1997-2005 | Robert Hass | |
| Young People's Literature | The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian | Sherman Alexie | |
| 2006 | Fiction | The Echo Maker | Richard Powers |
| Nonfiction | The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl | Timothy Egan | |
| Poetry | Splay Anthem | Nathaniel Mackey | |
| Young People's Literature | The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party | M.T. Anderson | |
| 2005 | Fiction | Europe Central | William T. Vollmann |
| Nonfiction | The Year of Magical Thinking | Joan Didion | |
| Poetry | Migration: New and Selected Poems | W.S. Merwin | |
| Young People's Literature | The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy | Jeanne Birdsall | |
| 2004 | Fiction | The News from Paraguay | Lily Tuck |
| Nonfiction | Arc of Justice: A Sagaof Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age | Kevin Boyle | |
| Poetry | Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003 | Jean Valentine | |
| Young People's Literature | The Godless | Pete Hautman | |
| 2003 | Fiction | The Great Fire | Shirley Hazzard |
| Nonfiction | Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy | Carlos Eire | |
| Poetry | The Singing | C.K. Williams | |
| Young People's Literature | The Canning Season | Polly Horvath | |
| 2002 | Fiction | Three Junes | Julia Glass |
| Nonfiction | Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson | Robert A. Caro | |
| Poetry | In the Next Galaxy | Ruth Stone | |
| Young People's Literature | The House of the Scorpion | Nancy Farmer | |
| 2001 | Fiction | The Corrections | Jonathan Franzen |
| Nonfiction | The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression | Andrew Solomon | |
| Poetry | Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry | Alan Dugan | |
| Young People's Literature | True Believer | Virginia Euwer Wolff | |
| 2000 | Fiction | In America | Susan Sontag |
| Nonfiction | In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex | Nathaniel Philbrick | |
| Poetry | Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems1988-2000 | Lucille Clifton | |
| Young People's Literature | Homeless Bird | Gloria Whelan | |
| 1999 | Fiction | Waiting | Ha Jin |
| Nonfiction | Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World WarII | John W. Dower | |
| Poetry | Vice: New and Selected Poems | Ai | |
| Young People's Literature | When Zachary Beaver Came to Town | Kimberly Willis Holt | |
| 1998 | Fiction | Charming Billy | Alice McDermott |
| Nonfiction | Slaves in the Family | Edward Ball | |
| Poetry | This Time: New and Selected Poems | Gerald Stern | |
| Young People's Literature | Holes | Louis Sachar | |
| 1997 | Fiction | Cold Mountain | Charles Frazier |
| Nonfiction | American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson | Joseph J. Ellis | |
| Poetry | Effort at Speech: New & Selected Poems | William Meredith | |
| Young People's Literature | Dancing on the Edge | Han Nolan | |
| 1996 | Fiction | Ship Fever and Other Stories | Andrea Barrett |
| Nonfiction | An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us | James Carroll | |
| Poetry | Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey | Hayden Carruth | |
| Young People's Literature | Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida | Victor Martinez | |
| 1995 | Fiction | Sabbath's Theater | Philip Roth |
| Nonfiction | The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism | Tina Rosenberg | |
| Poetry | Passing Through: The Later Poems | Stanley Kunitz | |
| 1994 | Fiction | A Frolic of His Own | William Gaddis |
| Nonfiction | How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter | Sherwin B. Nuland | |
| Poetry | A Worshipful Company of Fletchers | James Tate | |
| 1993 | Fiction | The Shipping News | E. Annie Proulx |
| Nonfiction | United States: Essays 1952-1992 | Gore Vidal | |
| Poetry | Garbage | A. R. Ammons | |
| 1992 | Fiction | All the Pretty Horses | Cormac McCarthy |
| Nonfiction | Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story | Paul Monette | |
| Poetry | New & Selected Poems | Mary Oliver | |
| 1991 | Fiction | Mating | Norman Rush |
| Nonfiction | Freedom | Orlando Patterson | |
| Poetry | What Work Is | Philip Levine | |
| 1990 | Fiction | Middle Passage | Charles Johnson |
| Nonfiction | The House of Morgan:An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance | Ron Chernow | |
| 1989 | Fiction | Spartina | John Casey |
| Nonfiction | From Beirut to Jerusalem | Thomas L. Friedman | |
| 1988 | Fiction | Paris Trout | Pete Dexter |
| Nonfiction | A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann andAmerica in Vietnam | Neil Sheehan | |
| 1987 | Fiction | Paco's Story | Larry Heinemann |
| Nonfiction | The Making of the Atomic Bomb | Richard Rhodes | |
| 1986 | Fiction | World's Fair | E.L. Doctorow |
| Nonfiction | Arctic Dreams | Barry Lopez | |
| 1985 | Fiction | White Noise | Don DeLillo |
| First Work of Fiction | Easy in the Islands | Bob Shacochis | |
| Nonfiction | Common Ground: A TurbulentDecade in the Lives of Three American Families | J. Anthony Lukas | |
| 1984 | Fiction | Victory Over Japan: A Book of Stories | Ellen Gilchrist |
| First Work of Fiction | Stones for Ibarra | Harriet Doerr | |
| Nonfiction | Andrew Jackson and the Course ofAmerican Democracy, 1833-1845 | Robert V. Remini | |
| 1983 | Autobiography/Biography (hardcover) | Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller | Judith Thurman |
| Autobiography/Biography (hardcover) | Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Time | James R. Mellow | |
| Children's Book, Fiction (hardcover) | Homesick: My Own Story | Jean Fritz | |
| Children's Book, Fiction (paperback) | A Place Apart | Paula Fox | |
| Children's Book, Fiction (paperback) | Marked By Fire | Joyce Carol Thomas | |
| Children's Book, Nonfiction | Chimney Sweeps | James Cross Giblin | |
| Children's Picture Book (hardcover) | Miss Rumphius | Barbara Cooney | |
| Children's Picture Book (hardcover) | Doctor De Soto | William Steig | |
| Children's Picture Book (paperback) | A House Is a House for Me | Mary Ann Hoberman | |
| Fiction (hardcover) | The Color Purple | Alice Walker | |
| Fiction (paperback) | The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty | Eudora Welty | |
| First Novel | The Women of Brewster Place | Gloria Naylor | |
| General Nonfiction (hardcover) | China: Alive in the Bitter Sea | Fox Butterfield | |
| General Nonfiction (hardcover) | National Defense | James Fallows | |
| History (hardcover) | Voices of Protest: HueyLong,Father Coughlin and The Great Depression | Alan Brinkley | |
| History (paperback) | Utopian Thought in the Western World | Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel | |
| Original Paperback | The Red Magician | Lisa Goldstein | |
| Poetry | Selected Poems | Galway Kinnell | |
| Poetry | Country Music: Selected Early Poems | Charles Wright | |
| Science (hardcover) | ""Subtle Is the Lord..."": The Science and Life of Albert Einstein | Abraham Pais | |
| Science (paperback) | The Mathematical Experience | Philip P. Davis and Reuben Hersh | |
| Translation | Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal | Richard Howard | |
| 1982 | Autobiography/Biography (hardcover) | Mornings on Horseback | David McCullough |
| Autobiography/Biography (paperback) | Walter Lippmann and the American Century | Ronald Steel | |
| Children's Book, Fiction (hardcover) | Westmark | Lloyd Alexander | |
| Children's Book, Fiction (paperback) | Words by Heart | Ouida Sebestyen | |
| Children's Book, Nonfiction | A Penguin Year | Susan Bonners | |
| Children's Book, Picture Book (hardcover) | Outside Over There | Maurice Sendak | |
| Children's Book, Picture Book (paperback) | Noah's Ark | Peter Spier | |
| Fiction (hardcover) | Rabbit Is Rich | John Updike | |
| Fiction (paperback) | So Long, See You Tomorrow | William Maxwell | |
| First Novel | Dale Loves Sophie to Death | Robb Forman Dew | |
| General Nonfiction (hardcover) | The Soul of a New Machine | Tracy Kidder | |
| General Nonfiction (paperback) | Naming Names | Victor S. Navasky | |
| History (hardcover) | People of the Sacred Mountain: A History of the Northern Cheyenne Chiefs and Warrior Societies, 1830-1879 | Father Peter John Powell | |
| History (paperback) | The Generation of 1914 | Robert Wohl | |
| Poetry | Life Supports: New and Collected Poems | William Bronk | |
| Science (hardcover) | Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind | Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey | |
| Science (paperback) | Taking the Quantum Leap: The New Physicsfor Nonscientists | Fred Alan Wolf | |
| Translation | Higuchi Ichiyo's In the Shade of Spring Leaves | Robert Lyons Danly | |
| Translation | The Ten Thousand Leaves: A Translation of the Man'Yoshu, Japan's Premier Anthology of Classical Poetry | Ian Hideo Levy | |
| 1981 | Autobiography/Biography (hardcover) | Walt Whitman | Justin Kaplan |
| Autobiography/Biography (paperback) | Samuel Beckett | Deidre Bair | |
| Children's Book, Fiction (hardcover) | The Night Swimmers | Betsy Byars | |
| Children's Book, Fiction (paperback) | Ramona and Her Mother | Beverly Cleary | |
| Children's Book, Nonfiction (hardcover) | Oh, Boy! Babies | Alison Cragin Herzig and Jane Lawrence Mali | |
| Fiction (hardcover) | Plains Song | Wright Morris | |
| Fiction (paperback) | The Stories of John Cheever | John Cheever | |
| First Novel | Sister Wolf | Ann Arensberg | |
| General Nonfiction (hardcover) | China Men | Maxine Hong Kingston | |
| General Nonfiction (paperback) | The Last Cowboy | Jane Kramer | |
| History (hardcover) | Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality | John Boswell | |
| History (paperback) | Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath ofSlavery | Leon F. Litwak | |
| Poetry | The Need to Hold Still | Lisel Mueller | |
| Science (hardcover) | The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections on Natural History | Stephen Jay Gould | |
| Science (paperback) | The Medusa and the Snail | Lewis Thomas | |
| Translation | The Letters of Gustave Flaubert | Francis Steegmuller | |
| Translation | Arno Schmidt's Evening Edged in Gold | John E. Woods | |
| 1980 | Autobiography (hardcover) | By Myself | Lauren Bacall |
| Autobiography (paperback) | And I Worked at the Writer's Trade | Malcolm Cowley | |
| Biography (hardcover) | The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt | Edmund Morris | |
| Biography (paperback) | Max Perkins: Editor of Genius | A. Scott Berg | |
| Children's Book (hardcover) | A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal | Joan W. Blos | |
| Children's Book (paperback) | A Swiftly Tilting Planet | Madeleine L'Engle | |
| Current Interest (hardcover) | Julia Child and More Company | Julia Child | |
| Current Interest (paperback) | The Culture of Narcissism | Christopher Lasch | |
| Fiction (hardcover) | Sophie's Choice | William Styron | |
| Fiction (paperback) | The World According to Garp | John Irving | |
| First Novel | Birdy | William Wharton | |
| General Nonfiction (hardcover) | The Right Stuff | Tom Wolfe | |
| General Nonfiction (paperback) | The Snow Leopard | Peter Matthiessen | |
| General Reference (hardcover) | The Complete Directory | Elder Witt, ed. | |
| General Reference (paperback) | Complete Directory to Prime NetworkTV Shows: 1946-Present | Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh | |
| History (hardcover) | White House Years | Henry A. Kissinger | |
| History (paperback) | A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| Mystery (hardcover) | The Green Ripper | John D. MacDonald | |
| Mystery (paperback) | Stained Glass | William F. Buckley, Jr. | |
| Poetry | Ashes | Philip Levine | |
| Religion/Inspiration (hardcover) | The Gnostic Gospels | Elaine Pagels | |
| Religion/Inspiration (paperback) | A Severe Mercy | Sheldon Vanauken | |
| Science (hardcover) | Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid | Douglas Hofstadter | |
| Science (paperback) | The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview ofthe New Physics | Gary Zukav | |
| Science Fiction (hardcover) | Jem | Frederick Pohl | |
| Science Fiction (paperback) | The Book of the Dun Cow | Walter Wangerin, Jr. | |
| Translation | Cesare Pavese's Hard Labor | William Arrowsmith | |
| Translation | Osip E. Mandelstam's Complete CriticalProse and Letters | Jane Gary Harris and Constance Link | |
| Western | Bendigo Shafter | Louis L'Amour | |
| 1979 | Biography/Autobiography | Robert Kennedy and His Times | Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. |
| Children's Book | The Great Gilly Hopkins | Katherine Paterson | |
| Contemporary Thought | The Snow Leopard | Peter Matthiessen | |
| Fiction | Going After Cacciato | Tim O'Brian | |
| History | Intellectual Life in the Colonial South, 1585-1760 | Richard Beale Davis | |
| Poetry | Mirabell: Books of Number | James Merrill | |
| Translation | Cesar Vallejo's The Complete Posthumous Poetry | Clayton Eshleman and Jose Rubin Barcia | |
| 1978 | Biography/Autobiography | Samuel Johnson | W. Jackson Bate |
| Children's Literature | The View from the Oak | Herbert Kohl and Judith Kohl | |
| Contemporary Thought | Winners and Losers | Gloria Emerson | |
| Fiction | Blood Ties | Mary Lee Settle | |
| History | The Path Between the Seas: Creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914 | David McCullough | |
| Poetry | The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov | Howard Nemerov | |
| Translation | Uwe George's In the Deserts of This Earth | Clara Winston and Richard Winston | |
| 1977 | Biography/Autobiography | Norman Thomas: The Last Idealist | W.A. Swanberg |
| Children's Book | The Master Puppeteer | Katherine Paterson | |
| Contemporary Thought | The Uses of Enchantment: TheMeaning and Importance of Fairy Tales | Bruno Bettleheim | |
| Fiction | The Spectator Bird | Wallace Stegner | |
| History | World of Our Fathers | Irving Howe | |
| Poetry | Collected Poems, 1930-1976 | Richard Eberhart | |
| Translation | Master Tung's Western Chamber Romance | Li-Li Ch'en | |
| 1976 | Arts and Letters | The Great War and Memory | Paul Fussell |
| Children's Literature | Bert Breen's Barn | Walter D. Edmonds | |
| Contemporary Affairs | Passage to Ararat | Michael J. Arlen | |
| Fiction | Jr | William Gaddis | |
| History | The Problem of Slavery in the Age ofRevolution, 1770-1823 | David Brion Davis | |
| Poetry | Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror | John Ashbery | |
| 1975 | Arts and Letters | Marcel Proust | Roger Shattuck |
| Arts and Letters | The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher | Lewis Thomas | |
| Biography | The Life of Emily Dickinson | Richard B. Sewall | |
| Children's Book | M.C. Higgins The Great | Virginia Hamilton | |
| Contemporary Affairs | All Gods Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw | Theodore Rosengarten | |
| Fiction | Dog Soldiers | Robert Stone | |
| Fiction | The Hair of Harold Roux | Thomas Williams | |
| History | The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson | Bernard Bailyn | |
| Philosophy and Religion | Anarchy, State and Utopia | Robert Nozick | |
| Poetry | Presentation Piece | Marilyn Hacker | |
| Science | Interpretation of Schizophrenia | Silvano Arieti | |
| Translation | Miguel D. Unamuno's The Agonyof Christianity and Essays on Faith | Anthony Kerrigan | |
| 1974 | Arts and Letters | Deeper into the Movies | Pauline Kael |
| Biography | Malcolm Lowry: A Biography | Douglas Day | |
| Biography | Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian | John Clive | |
| Children's Book | The Court of the Stone Children | Eleanor Cameron | |
| Contemporary Affairs | The Briar Patch | Murray Kempton | |
| Fiction | A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories | Isaac Bashevis Singer | |
| Fiction | Gravity's Rainbow | Thomas Pynchon | |
| History | Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian | John Clive | |
| Philosophy and Religion | Edmund Husserl: Philosopher of Infinite Tasks | Maurice Natanson | |
| Poetry | Diving into the Wreck: Poems, 1971-72 | Adrienne Rich;The Fall of America: Poems of These States | |
| Poetry | The Fall of America: Poems of These States | Allen Ginsberg | |
| Science | Life: The Unfinished Experiment | S.E. Lurie | |
| Translation | Octavio Paz's: Alternating Current | Helen R. Lane | |
| Translation | Paul Valery's Monsieur Teste | Jackson Matthews | |
| 1973 | Arts and Letters | Diderot | Arthur M. Wilson |
| Biography | George Washington, Vol. IV: Anguish and Farewell, 1793-1799 | James Thomas Flexner | |
| Children's Book | The Farthest Shore | Ursula K. LeGuin | |
| Contemporary Affairs | Fire in the Lake: The Vietnameseand the Americans in Vietnam | Frances Fitzgerald | |
| Fiction | Chimera | John Barth | |
| Fiction | Augustus | John Williams | |
| History | The Children of Pride: A TrueStoryof Georgia and the Civil War | Robert Manson Myers | |
| History | Judenrat: The Jewish Councilsin Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation | Isaiah Trunk | |
| Philosophy and Religion | A Religious History of the American People | S.E. Ahlstrom | |
| Poetry | Collected Poems: 1951-1971 | A.R. Ammons | |
| Science | The Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator-PreyRelations | George B. Schaller | |
| Translation | Virgil's Aeneid | Allen Mandelbaum | |
| 1972 | Arts and Letters | The Classical Style: Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven | Charles Rosen |
| Biography | Eleanor and Franklin:The Story of Their Relationship, Based on Eleanor Roosevelt's Private Papers | Joseph P. Lash | |
| Children's Book | The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine or the Hithering Thithering Djinn | Donald Bartheleme | |
| Contemporary Affairs | The Last Whole Earth Catalog | Stewart Brand, ed. | |
| Fiction | The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor | Flannery O'Connor | |
| History | Ordeal of the Union, Vols. VII & VIII: The Organized War, 1863-1864 and The Organized War to Victory | Allen Nevins | |
| Philosophy and Religion | Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America | Martin E. Marty | |
| Poetry | The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara | Frank O'Hara | |
| Poetry | Selected Poems | Howard Moss | |
| Science | The Blue Whale | George L. Small | |
| Translation | Jacques Monod's Chance and Necessity | Austryn Wainhouse | |
| 1971 | Arts and Letters | Cocteau: A Biography | Francis Steegmuller |
| Children's Book | The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian | Lloyd Alexander | |
| Fiction | Mr. Sammler's Planet | Saul Bellow | |
| History and Biography | Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom | James MacGregor Burns | |
| Poetry | To See, To Take | Mona Van Duyn | |
| Science | Science in the British Colonies of America | Raymond Phineas Stearns | |
| Translation | Bertolt Brecht's Saint Joan of the Stockyards | Frank Jones | |
| Translation | Yasunari Kawabata's The Sound of The Mountain | Edward G. Seidensticker | |
| 1970 | Arts and Letters | An Unfinished Woman, A Memoir | Lillian Hellman |
| Children's Book | A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy GrowingUp in Warsaw | Isaac Bashevis Singer | |
| Fiction | Them | Joyce Carol Oates | |
| History and Biography | Huey Long | T. Harry Williams | |
| Philosophy and Religion | Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence | Erik H. Erikson | |
| Poetry | The Complete Poems | Elizabeth Bishop | |
| Translation | Celine's Castle to Castle | Ralph Manheim | |
| 1969 | Arts and Letters | The Armies of the Night: History As A Novel, The Novel As History | Norman Mailer |
| Children's Literature | Journey from Peppermint Street | Meindert DeJong | |
| Fiction | Steps | Jerzy Kosinski | |
| History and Biography | White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 | Winthrop D. Jordan | |
| Poetry | His Toy, His Dream, His Rest | John Berryman | |
| Science | Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima | Robert J. Lifton | |
| Translation | Calvino's Cosmicomics | William Weaver | |
| 1968 | Arts and Letters | Selected Essays | William Troy |
| Fiction | The Eighth Day | Thornton Wilder | |
| History and Biography | Memoirs: 1925-1950 | George F. Kennan | |
| Poetry | The Light Around the Body | Robert Bly | |
| Science, Philosophy, and Religion | Death at an Early Age | Jonathan Kozol | |
| Translation | Soren Kirkegaard's Journals and Papers | Edna Hong and Howard Hong | |
| 1967 | Arts and Letters | Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain | Justin Kaplan |
| Fiction | The Fixer | Bernard Malamud | |
| History and Biography | The Enlightenment, Vol. 1: An Interpretation | Peter Gay | |
| Poetry | Nights and Days | James Merrill | |
| Science, Philosophy, and Religion | La Vida | Oscar Lewis | |
| Translation | Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch | Gregory Rabassa | |
| Translation | Casanova's History of My Life | Willard Trask | |
| 1966 | Arts and Letters | Paris Journal, 1944-1965 | Janet Flanner |
| Fiction | The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter | Katherine Anne Porter | |
| History and Biography | A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House | Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. | |
| Poetry | Buckdancer's Choice Poems | James Dickey | |
| 1965 | Arts and Letters | Oysters of Lockmariaquer | Eleanor Clark |
| Fiction | Herzog | Saul Bellow | |
| History and Biography | The Life of Lenin | Louis Fisher | |
| Poetry | The Far Field | Theodore Roethke | |
| Science, Philosophy, and Religion | God andGolem, Inc.: A Comment on Certain Points Where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion | Norbert Wiener | |
| 1964 | Arts and Letters | John Keats: The Making of a Poet | Aileen Ward |
| Fiction | The Centaur | John Updike | |
| History and Biography | The Rise of the West | William H. McNeill | |
| Poetry | Selected Poems | John Crowe Ransom | |
| Science, Philosophy, and Religion | Man-Made America | Christopher Tunnard and Boris Pushkarev | |
| 1963 | Fiction | Morte d'Urban | J.F. Powers |
| Nonfiction | Henry James: Vol. II,The Conquest of London; Vol. III, The Middle Years | Leon Edel | |
| Poetry | Traveling Through the Dark | William Stafford | |
| 1962 | Fiction | The Moviegoer | Walker Percy |
| Nonfiction | The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects | Lewis Mumford | |
| Poetry | Poems | Alan Dugan | |
| 1961 | Fiction | The Waters of Kronos | Conrad Richter |
| Nonfiction | The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich | William L. Shirer | |
| Poetry | The Woman at the Washington Zoo | Randall Jarrell | |
| 1960 | Fiction | Goodbye Columbus | Philip Roth |
| Nonfiction | James Joyce | Richard Ellman | |
| Poetry | Life Studies | Robert Lowell | |
| 1959 | Fiction | The Magic Barrel | Bernard Malamud |
| Nonfiction | Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame De Stael | J. Christopher Herold | |
| Poetry | Words for the Wind | Theodore Roethke | |
| 1958 | Fiction | The Wapshot Chronicle | John Cheever |
| Nonfiction | The Lion and the Throne | Catherine Drinker Bowen | |
| Poetry | Promises: Poems, 1954-1956 | Robert Penn Warren | |
| 1957 | Fiction | The Field of Vision | Wright Morris |
| Nonfiction | Russia Leaves the War | George F. Kennan | |
| Poetry | Things of the World | Richard Wilbur | |
| 1956 | Fiction | Ten North Frederick | John O'Hara |
| Nonfiction | An American in Italy | Herbert Kubly | |
| Poetry | The Shield of Achilles | W.H. Auden | |
| 1955 | Fiction | A Fable | William Faulkner |
| Nonfiction | The Measure of Man | Joseph W. Krutch | |
| Poetry | The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens | Wallace Stevens | |
| 1954 | Fiction | The Adventures of Augie March | Saul Bellow |
| Nonfiction | A Stillness at Appomattox | Bruce Catton | |
| Poetry | Collected Poems | Conrad Aiken | |
| 1953 | Fiction | Invisible Man | Ralph Ellison |
| Nonfiction | The Course of an Empire | Bernard A. De Voto | |
| Poetry | Collected Poems 1917-1952 | Archibald MacLeish | |
| 1952 | Fiction | From Here to Eternity | James Jones |
| Nonfiction | The Sea Around Us | Rachel Carson | |
| Poetry | Collected Poems | Marianne Moore | |
| 1951 | Fiction | The Collected Stories of William Faulkner | William Faulkner |
| Nonfiction | Herman Melville | Newton Arvin | |
| Poetry | The Auroras of Autumn | Wallace Stevens | |
| 1950 | Fiction | The Man with the Golden Arm | Nelson Algren |
| Nonfiction | Ralph Waldo | Ralph L. Rusk | |
| Poetry | Paterson: Book III and Selected Poems | William Carlos Williams |