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Pulitzer Prizes
1950-present
Works are judged in these five categories:
For distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life.
For a distinguished book upon the history of the United States.
For a distinguished biography or autobiography by an American author.
For a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author.
For a distinguished book of non-fiction by an American author that is not eligible for consideration in any other category.
For more information and for prizes given before 1950, see: The Pulitzer Prizes website
Click on the titles below to search the catalog
| Year | Category | Title | Author |
| 2011 | Biography | Washington: A Life | Ron Chernow |
| Drama | Clybourne Park | Bruce Norris | |
| Fiction | A Visit from the Goon Squad | Jennifer Egan | |
| History | The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery | Eric Foner | |
| Nonfiction | The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer | Siddhartha Mukherjee | |
| Poetry | The Best of It: New and Selected Poems | Kay Ryan | |
| 2010 | Biography | The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt | T.J. Stiles |
| Drama | Next to Normal | Music by Tom Kitt, Book and Lyrics by Brian Yorkey | |
| Fiction | Tinkers | Paul Harding | |
| History | Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World | Liaquat Ahamed | |
| Nonfiction | The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy | David E. Hoffman | |
| Poetry | Versed | Rae Armantrout | |
| 2009 | Biography | American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House | Jon Meacham |
| Drama | Ruined | Lynn Nottage | |
| Fiction | Olive Kitteridge | Elizabeth Strout | |
| History | The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family | Annette Gordon-Reed | |
| Nonfiction | Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II | Douglas A. Blackmon | |
| Poetry | The Shadow of Sirius | W.S. Merwin | |
| 2008 | Biography | Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father | John Matteson |
| Drama | August: Osage County | Tracy Letts | |
| Fiction | The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao | Junot Diaz | |
| History | What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 | Daniel Walker Howe | |
| Nonfiction | The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 | Saul Friedländer | |
| Poetry | Time and Materials | Robert Hass | |
| Failure | Philip Schultz | ||
| 2007 | Biography | The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher | Debby Applegate |
| Drama | Rabbit Hole | David Lindsay-Abaire | |
| Fiction | The Road | Cormac McCarthy | |
| History | The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation | Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff | |
| Nonfiction | The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 | Lawrence Wright | |
| Poetry | Native Guard | Natasha Trethewey | |
| 2006 | Biography | American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer | Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin |
| Drama | No Award | ||
| Fiction | March | Geraldine Brooks | |
| History | Polio: An American Story | David M. Oshinsky | |
| Nonfiction | Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya | Caroline Elkins | |
| Poetry | Late Wife | Claudia Emerson | |
| 2005 | Biography | de Kooning: An American Master | Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan |
| Drama | Doubt, a parable | John Patrick Shanley | |
| Fiction | Gilead | Marilynne Robinson | |
| History | Washington's Crossing | David Hackett Fischer | |
| Nonfiction | Ghost Wars | Steve Coll | |
| Poetry | Delights & Shadows | Ted Kooser | |
| 2004 | Biography | Khrushchev: The Man and His Era | William Taubman |
| Drama | I Am My Own Wife | Doug Wright | |
| Fiction | The Known World | Edward P. Jones | |
| History | A Nation Under Our Feet | Steven Hahn | |
| Nonfiction | Gulag: A History | Anne Applebaum | |
| Poetry | Walking to Martha's Vineyard | Franz Wright | |
| 2003 | Biography | Master of the Senate | Robert A. Caro |
| Drama | Anna in the Tropics | Nilo Cruz | |
| Fiction | Middlesex | Jeffrey Eugenides | |
| History | An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 | Rick Atkinson | |
| Nonfiction | A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide | Samantha Power | |
| Poetry | Moy Sand and Gravel | Paul Muldoon | |
| 2002 | Biography | John Adams | David McCullough |
| Drama | Topdog/Underdog | Suzan-Lori Parks | |
| Fiction | Empire Falls | Richard Russo | |
| History | The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America | Louis Menand | |
| Nonfiction | Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution | Diane McWhorter | |
| Poetry | Practical Gods | Carl Dennis | |
| 2001 | Biography | W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963 | David Levering Lewis |
| Drama | Proof | David Auburn | |
| Fiction | The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay | Michael Chabon | |
| History | Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation | Joseph J. Ellis | |
| Nonfiction | Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan | Herbert P. Bix | |
| Poetry | Different Hours | Stephen Dunn | |
| 2000 | Biography | Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) | Stacy Schiff |
| Drama | Dinner With Friends | Donald Margulies | |
| Fiction | Interpreter of Maladies | Jhumpa Lahiri | |
| History | Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 | David M. Kennedy | |
| Nonfiction | Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II | John W. Dower | |
| Poetry | Repair | C.K. Williams | |
| 1999 | Biography | Lindbergh | A. Scott Berg |
| Drama | Wit | Margaret Edson | |
| Fiction | The Hours | Michael Cunningham | |
| History | Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 | Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace | |
| Nonfiction | Annals of the Former World | John McPhee | |
| Poetry | Blizzard of One | Mark Strand | |
| 1998 | Biography | Personal History | Katharine Graham |
| Drama | How I Learned to Drive | Paula Vogel | |
| Fiction | American Pastoral | Philip Roth | |
| History | Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion | Edward J. Larson | |
| Nonfiction | Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies | Jared Diamond | |
| Poetry | Black Zodiac | Charles Wright | |
| 1997 | Biography | Angela's Ashes : A Memoir | Frank McCourt |
| Drama | No Award | ||
| Fiction | Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer | Steven Millhauser | |
| History | Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution | Jack N. Rakove | |
| Nonfiction | Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris | Richard Kluger | |
| Poetry | Alive Together: New and Selected Poems | Lisel Mueller | |
| 1996 | Biography | God: A Biography | Jack Miles |
| Drama | Rent | the late Jonathan Larson | |
| Fiction | Independence Day | Richard Ford | |
| History | William Cooper's Town | Alan Taylor | |
| Nonfiction | The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts after Communism | Tina Rosenberg | |
| Poetry | The Dream of the Unified Field | Jorie Graham | |
| 1995 | Biography | Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life | Joan D. Hedrick |
| Drama | The Young Man From Atlanta | Horton Foote | |
| Fiction | The Stone Diaries | Carol Shields | |
| History | No Ordinary Time | Doris Kearns Goodwin | |
| Nonfiction | The Beak of the Finch | Jonathan Weiner | |
| Poetry | The Simple Truth | Philip Levine | |
| 1994 | Biography | W.E.B. DuBois | David L. Lewis |
| Drama | Three Tall Women | Edward Albee | |
| Fiction | The Shipping News | E. Annie Proulx | |
| History | No Award | ||
| Nonfiction | Lenin's Tomb | David Remnick | |
| Poetry | Neon Vernacular | Yusef Komunyakaa | |
| 1993 | Biography | Truman | David McCullough |
| Drama | Angels in America: Millennium Approaches | Tony Kushner | |
| Fiction | A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain | Robert Olen Butler | |
| History | The Radicalism of the American Revolution | Gordon S. Wood | |
| Nonfiction | Lincoln at Gettysburg | Garry Wills | |
| Poetry | The Wild Iris | Louise Gluck | |
| 1992 | Biography | Fortunate Son | Lewis B. Puller, Jr. |
| Drama | The Kentucky Cycle | Robert Schenkkan | |
| Fiction | A Thousand Acres | Jane Smiley | |
| History | The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties | Mark E. Neely, Jr. | |
| Nonfiction | The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power | Daniel Yergin | |
| Poetry | Selected Poems | James Tate | |
| 1991 | Biography | Jackson Pollock | Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith |
| Drama | Lost in Yonkers | Neil Simon | |
| Fiction | Rabbit at Rest | John Updike | |
| History | A Midwife's Tale | Laurel Thatcher Ulrich | |
| Nonfiction | The Ants | Bert Holldobler and Edward O. Wilson | |
| Poetry | Near Changes | Mona Van Duyn | |
| 1990 | Biography | Machiavelli in Hell | Sebastian de Grazia |
| Drama | The Piano Lesson | August Wilson | |
| Fiction | The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love | Oscar Hijuelos | |
| History | In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines | Stanley Karnow | |
| Nonfiction | And Their Children after Them | Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson | |
| Poetry | The World Doesn't End | Charles Simic | |
| 1989 | Biography | Oscar Wilde | Richard Ellmann |
| Drama | The Heidi Chronicles | Wendy Wasserstein | |
| Fiction | Breathing Lessons | Anne Tyler | |
| History | Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era | James M. McPherson | |
| Nonfiction | A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam | Neil Sheehan | |
| Poetry | New and Collected Poems | Richard Wilbur | |
| 1988 | Biography | Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe | David Herbert Donald |
| Drama | Driving Miss Daisy | Alfred Uhry | |
| Fiction | Beloved | Toni Morrison | |
| History | The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846-1876 | Robert Bruce | |
| Nonfiction | The Making of the Atomic Bomb | Richard Rhodes | |
| Poetry | Partial Accounts | William Meredith | |
| 1987 | Biography | Bearing the Cross | David J. Garrow |
| Drama | Fences | August Wilson | |
| Fiction | A Summons to Memphis | Peter Taylor | |
| History | Voyagers to the West | Bernard Bailyn | |
| Nonfiction | Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land | David K. Shipler | |
| Poetry | Thomas and Beulah | Rita Dove | |
| 1986 | Biography | Louise Bogan: A Portrait | Elizabeth Frank |
| Drama | No Award | ||
| Fiction | Lonesome Dove | Larry McMurtry | |
| History | The Heavens and the Earth | Walter A. McDougall | |
| Nonfiction | Common Ground | J. Anthony Lukas | |
| Poetry | The Flying Change | Henry Taylor | |
| 1985 | Biography | The Life and Times of Cotton Mather | Kenneth Silverman |
| Drama | Sunday in the Park With George | Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by James Lapine |
|
| Fiction | Foreign Affairs | Alison Lurie | |
| History | Prophets of Regulation | Thomas K. McCraw | |
| Nonfiction | The Good War | Studs Terkel | |
| Poetry | Yin | Carolyn Kizer | |
| 1984 | Biography | Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915 | Louis R. Harlan |
| Drama | Glengarry Glen Ross | David Mamet | |
| Fiction | Ironweed | William Kennedy | |
| History | No Award | ||
| Nonfiction | The Social Transformation of American Medicine | Paul Starr | |
| Poetry | American Primitive | Mary Oliver | |
| 1983 | Biography | Growing Up | Russell Baker |
| Drama | 'Night, Mother | Marsha Norman | |
| Fiction | The Color Purple | Alice Walker | |
| History | The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 | Rhys L. Isaac | |
| Nonfiction | Is There No Place on Earth for Me? | Susan Sheehan | |
| Poetry | Selected Poems | Galway Kinnell | |
| 1982 | Biography | Grant: A Biography | William McFeely |
| Drama | A Soldier's Play | Charles Fuller | |
| Fiction | Rabbit Is Rich | John Updike | |
| History | Mary Chesnut's Civil War | edited by C. Vann Woodward | |
| Nonfiction | The Soul of a New Machine | Tracy Kidder | |
| Poetry | The Collected Poems | Sylvia Plath | |
| 1981 | Biography | Peter the Great: His Life and World | Robert K. Massie |
| Drama | Crimes of the Heart | Beth Henley | |
| Fiction | A Confederacy of Dunces | John Kennedy Toole | |
| History | American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876 | Lawrence A. Cremin | |
| Nonfiction | Fin-De-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture | Carl E. Schorske | |
| Poetry | The Morning of the Poem | James Schuyler | |
| 1980 | Biography | The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt | Edmund Morris |
| Drama | Talley's Folly | Lanford Wilson | |
| Fiction | The Executioner's Song | Norman Mailer | |
| History | Been in the Storm So Long | Leon F. Litwack | |
| Nonfiction | Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid | Douglas R. Hofstadter | |
| Poetry | Selected Poems | Donald Justice | |
| 1979 | Biography | Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews | Leonard Baker |
| Drama | Buried Child | Sam Shepard | |
| Fiction | The Stories of John Cheever | John Cheever | |
| History | The Dred Scott Case Its Significance in American Law and Politics | Don E. Fehrenbacher | |
| Nonfiction | On Human Nature | Edward O. Wilson | |
| Poetry | Now and Then | Robert Penn Warren | |
| 1978 | Biography | Samuel Johnson | Walter Jackson Bate |
| Drama | The Gin Game | Donald L. Coburn | |
| Fiction | Elbow Room | James Alan McPherson | |
| History | The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business | Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. | |
| Nonfiction | The Dragons of Eden | Carl Sagan | |
| Poetry | Collected Poems | Howard Nemerov | |
| 1977 | Biography | A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence | John E. Mack |
| Drama | The Shadow Box | Michael Cristofer | |
| Fiction | No Award | ||
| History | The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 | David M. Potter (finished by Don E. Fehrenbacher) | |
| Nonfiction | Beautiful Swimmers | William W. Warner | |
| Poetry | Divine Comedies | James Merrill | |
| 1976 | Biography | Edith Wharton: A Biography | R.W.B. Lewis |
| Drama | A Chorus Line | Conceived, choreographed and directed by Michael Bennett, with book by James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante, music by Marvin Hamlisch, and lyrics by Edward Kleban |
|
| Fiction | Humboldt's Gift | Saul Bellow | |
| History | Lamy of Santa Fe | Paul Horgan | |
| Nonfiction | Why Survive? Being Old in America | Robert N. Butler | |
| Poetry | Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror | John Ashbery | |
| 1975 | Biography | The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York | Robert Caro |
| Drama | Seascape | Edward Albee | |
| Fiction | The Killer Angels | Michael Shaara | |
| History | Jefferson and His Time, Vols. I-V | Dumas Malone | |
| Nonfiction | Pilgrim at Tinker Creek | Annie Dillard | |
| Poetry | Turtle Island | Gary Snyder | |
| 1974 | Biography | O'Neill, Son and Artist | Louis Sheaffer |
| Drama | No Award | ||
| Fiction | No Award | ||
| History | The Americans: The Democratic Experience | Daniel J. Boorstin | |
| Nonfiction | The Denial of Death | Ernest Becker | |
| Poetry | The Dolphin | Robert Lowell | |
| 1973 | Biography | Luce and His Empire | W.A. Swanberg |
| Drama | That Championship Season | Jason Miller | |
| Fiction | The Optimist's Daughter | Eudora Welty | |
| History | People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization | Michael Kammen | |
| Nonfiction | Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam | Frances Fitzgerald | |
| Poetry | Up Country | Maxine Kumin | |
| 1972 | Biography | Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship, Based on Eleanor Roosevelt's Private Papers | Joseph P. Lash |
| Drama | No Award | ||
| Fiction | Angle of Repose | Wallace Stegner | |
| History | Neither Black Nor White | Carl N. Degler | |
| Nonfiction | Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 | Barbara W. Tuchm | |
| Poetry | Collected Poems | James Wright | |
| 1971 | Biography | Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 1915 -1938 | Lawrence Thompson |
| Drama | The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds | Paul Zindel | |
| Fiction | No Award | ||
| History | Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom | James MacGregor Burns | |
| Nonfiction | The Rising Sun | John Toland | |
| Poetry | The Carrier of Ladders | William S. Merwin | |
| 1970 | Biography | Huey Long | T. Harry Williams |
| Drama | No Place To Be Somebody | Charles Gordone | |
| Fiction | Collected Stories | Jean Stafford | |
| History | Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department | Dean Acheson | |
| Nonfiction | Gandhi's Truth | Erik H. Erikson | |
| Poetry | Untitled Subjects | Richard Howard | |
| 1969 | Biography | The Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends | Benjamin Lawrence Reid |
| 9 | Drama | The Great White Hope | Howard Sackler |
| Fiction | House Made of Dawn | N. Scott Momaday | |
| History | Origins of the Fifth Amendment | Leonard W. Levy | |
| Nonfiction | The Armies of the Night | Norman Mailer | |
| Poetry | Of Being Numerous | George Oppen | |
| 1968 | Biography | Memoirs | George E. Kennan |
| Drama | No Award | ||
| Fiction | The Confessions of Nat Turner | William Styron | |
| History | The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution | Bernard Bailyn | |
| Nonfiction | Rousseau and Revolution, The Tenth and Concluding Volume of the Story of Civilization | Will and Ariel Durant | |
| Poetry | The Hard Hours | Anthony Hecht | |
| 1967 | Biography | Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain | Justin Kaplan |
| Drama | A Delicate Balance | Edward Albee | |
| Fiction | The Fixer | Bernard Malamud | |
| History | Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West | William H. Goetzmann | |
| Nonfiction | The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture | David Brion Davis | |
| Poetry | Live or Die | Anne Sexton | |
| 1966 | Biography | A Thousand Days | Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. |
| Drama | No Award | ||
| Fiction | Collected Stories | Katherine Anne Porter | |
| History | The Life of the Mind in America | Perry Miller | |
| Nonfiction | Wandering through Winter | Edwin Way Teale | |
| Poetry | Selected Poems | Richard Eberhart | |
| 1965 | Biography | Henry Adams | Ernest Samuels |
| Drama | The Subject Was Roses | Frank D. Gilroy | |
| Fiction | The Keepers of the House | Shirley Ann Grau | |
| History | The Greenback Era | Irwin Unger | |
| Nonfiction | O Strange New World | Howard Mumford Jones | |
| Poetry | 77 Dream Songs | John Berryman | |
| 1964 | Biography | John Keats | Walter Jackson Bate |
| Drama | No Award | ||
| Fiction | No Award | ||
| History | Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town | Sumner Chilton Powell | |
| Nonfiction | Anti-Intellectualism in American Life | Richard Hofstadter | |
| Poetry | At the End of the Open Road | Louis Simpson | |
| 1963 | Biography | Henry James | Leon Edel |
| Drama | No Award | ||
| Fiction | The Reivers | William Faulkner | |
| History | Washington, Village and Capital, 1800-1878 | Constance McLaughlin Green | |
| Nonfiction | The Guns of August | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| Poetry | Pictures from Brueghel | William Carlos Williams | |
| 1962 | Biography | No Award | |
| Drama | How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying | Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows | |
| Fiction | The Edge of Sadness | Edwin O'Connor | |
| History | The Triumphant Empire: Thunderclouds Gather in the West, 1763-1766 | Lawrence H. Gipson | |
| Nonfiction | The Making of the President, 1960 | Theodore H. White | |
| Poetry | Poems | Alan Dugan | |
| 1961 | Biography | Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War | David Donald |
| Drama | All The Way Home | Tad Mosel | |
| Fiction | To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee | |
| History | Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference | Herbert Feis | |
| Poetry | Times Three: Selected Verse from Three Decades | Phyllis McGinley | |
| 1960 | Biography | John Paul Jones | Samuel Eliot Morison |
| Drama | Fiorello! | Book by Jerome Weidman and George Abbott, Music by Jerry Bock and Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick | |
| Fiction | Advise and Consent | Allen Drury | |
| History | In the Days of McKinley | Margaret Leech | |
| Poetry | Heart's Needle | W.D. Snodgrass | |
| 1959 | Biography | Woodrow Wilson | Arthur Walworth |
| Drama | J. B. | Archibald Macleish | |
| Fiction | The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters | Robert Lewis Taylor | |
| History | The Republican Era: 1869-1901 | Leonard D. White, with Jean Schneider | |
| Poetry | Selected Poems 1928-1958 | Stanley Kunitz | |
| 1958 | Biography | George Washington, Volumes I-VI, | Douglas Southall Freeman |
| Biography | George Washington, Volumes VII | John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth | |
| Drama | Look Homeward, Angel | Ketti Frings | |
| Fiction | A Death in the Family | James Agee | |
| History | Banks and Politics in America | Bray Hammond | |
| Poetry | Promises: Poems 1954-1956 | Robert Penn Warren | |
| 1957 | Biography | Profiles in Courage | John F. Kennedy |
| Drama | Long Day's Journey Into Night | Eugene O'Neill | |
| Fiction | No Award | ||
| History | Russia Leaves the War: Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920 | George F. Kennan | |
| Poetry | Things of This World | Richard Wilbur | |
| 1956 | Biography | Benjamin Henry Latrobe | Talbot Faulkner Hamlin |
| Drama | Diary of Anne Frank | Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich | |
| Fiction | Andersonville | MacKinlay Kantor | |
| History | The Age of Reform | Richard Hofstadter | |
| Poetry | Poems--North & South | Elizabeth Bishop | |
| 1955 | Biography | The Taft Story | William S. White |
| Drama | Cat on A Hot Tin Roof | Tennessee Williams | |
| Fiction | A Fable | William Faulkner | |
| History | Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History | Paul Horgan | |
| Poetry | Collected Poems | Wallace Stevens | |
| 1954 | Biography | The Spirit of St. Louis | Charles A. Lindbergh |
| Drama | The Teahouse of the August Moon | John Patrick | |
| Fiction | No Award | ||
| History | A Stillness at Appomattox | Bruce Catton | |
| Poetry | The Waking | Theodore Roethke | |
| 1953 | Biography | Edmund Pendleton 1734-1803 | David J. Mays |
| Drama | Picnic | William Inge | |
| Fiction | The Old Man and the Sea | Ernest Hemingway | |
| History | The Era of Good Feelings | George Dangerfield | |
| Poetry | Collected Poems 1917-1952 | Archibald MacLeish | |
| 1952 | Biography | Charles Evans Hughes | Merlo J. Pusey |
| Drama | The Shrike | Joseph Kramm | |
| Fiction | The Caine Mutiny | Herman Wouk | |
| History | The Uprooted | Oscar Handlin | |
| Poetry | Collected Poems | Marianne Moore | |
| 1951 | Biography | John C. Calhoun: American Portrait | Margaret Louise Coit |
| Drama | No Award | ||
| Fiction | The Town | Conrad Richter | |
| History | The Old Northwest, Pioneer Period 1815-1840 | R. Carlyle Buley | |
| Poetry | The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg | Carl Sandburg | |
| 1950 | Biography | John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy | Samuel Flagg Bemis |
| Drama | South Pacific | Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, 2nd and Joshua Logan | |
| Fiction | The Way West | A.B. Guthrie, Jr. | |
| History | Art and Life in America | Oliver W. Larkin | |
| Poetry | Annie Allen | Gwendolyn Brooks |