# National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography

The National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, established in 1983, is an annual American literary award presented by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English." Awards are presented annually to books published in the U.S. during the preceding calendar year in six categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Memoir/Autobiography, Biography, and Criticism.
Books previously published in English are not eligible, such as re-issues and paperback editions. They do consider "translations, short story and essay collections, self published books, and any titles that fall under the general categories."
The judges are the volunteer directors of the NBCC who are 24 members serving rotating three-year terms, with eight elected annually by the voting members, namely "professional book review editors and book reviewers." Winners of the awards are announced each year at the NBCC awards ceremony in conjunction with the yearly membership meeting, which takes place in March.
Between 1983 and 2004, the award was presented jointly with autobiography.

## Recipients

National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography winners and finalists :
| Year | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 1983 | Joyce Johnson | Minor Characters | the women of the Beat Generation | Winner |
| 1983 | Kenneth R. Manning | Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just | Ernest Everett Just (1883–1941), pioneering African-American biologist, academic, and science writer | Finalist |
| 1983 | Nicholas Gage | Eleni | the life of his late mother in Greece during World War II and the Greek Civil War | Finalist |
| 1983 | E. Fuller Torrey | The Roots of Treason: Ezra Pound and the Secret of St. Elizabeth’s | Ezra Pound (1885–1972), American poet and critic | Finalist |
| 1983 | Fred Kaplan | Thomas Carlyle | Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher | Finalist |
| 1984 | Joseph Frank | Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850–1859 | Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), Russian novelist | Winner |
| 1984 | Susan Cheever | Home Before Dark | memoir and biography of her father, author John Cheever | Finalist |
| 1984 | Elinor Langer | Josephine Herbst | Josephine Herbst (1892–1969), American writer and journalist | Finalist |
| 1984 | Eudora Welty | One Writer’s Beginnings | | Finalist |
| 1984 | Paul Zweig | Walt Whitman: The Making of a Poet | Walt Whitman (1819–1892), American poet, essayist and journalist | Finalist |
| 1985 | Leon Edel | Henry James: A Life | Henry James (1843–1916), American-born British writer and literary critic | Winner |
| 1985 | Leonard Arrington | Brigham Young: American Moses | Brigham Young (1801–1877), Latter Day Saint religious leader | Finalist |
| 1985 | James Lord | Giacometti: A Biography | Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966), Swiss sculptor and painter | Finalist |
| 1985 | Elizabeth Frank | Louise Bogan | Louise Bogan (1897–1970), American poet | Finalist |
| 1985 | Michael Lesy | Visible Light: Four Creative Biographies | photographers Angelo Rizzuto, Bill Burke, John McWilliams, and Andrea Kovacs | Finalist |
| 1986 | Arnold Rampersad | The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. I: 1902-1941 | Langston Hughes (1901–1967), American writer and social activist | Winner |
| 1986 | Joseph Frank | Dostoevsky: The Stir of Liberation, 1860-1865 | Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), Russian novelist | Finalist |
| 1986 | Art Spiegelman | Maus: A Survivor’s Tale | the lives of his parents in Poland during the Holocaust and in the U.S. afterward | Finalist |
| 1986 | Theodore Rosengarten | Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter | Thomas B. Chaplin (1822–1890), American plantation owner and slaveholder | Finalist |
| 1986 | Jonathan Brown | Velázquez: Painter and Courtier | Diego Velázquez (1599–1660), Spanish painter | Finalist |
| 1987 | Donald R. Howard | Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World | Geoffrey Chaucer (1340s–1400), English poet and author, writer of The Canterbury Tales | Winner |
| 1987 | Annie Dillard | An American Childhood | | Finalist |
| 1987 | Prudence Crowther | Don’t Tread on Me: The Selected Letters of S.J. Perelman | S.J. Perelman (1904–1979), American humorist and screenwriter | Finalist |
| 1987 | Paul Taylor | Private Domain | | Finalist |
| 1987 | Arthur Miller | Timebends: A Life | | Finalist |
| 1988 | Richard Ellmann | Oscar Wilde | Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish poet, playwright, and aesthete | Winner |
| 1988 | Paul Monette | Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir | | Finalist |
| 1988 | Valerie Eliot | The Letters of T.S. Eliot, 1909-1922 | T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), US-born British poet | Finalist |
| 1988 | Paul Jay | The Selected Correspondence of Kenneth Burke and Malcolm Cowley, 1915-1981 | | Finalist |
| 1988 | Robert Wright | Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an Age of Information | American scientists Edward Fredkin, Edward O. Wilson, and Kenneth Boulding | Finalist |
| 1989 | Geoffrey C. Ward | A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt | Franklin Roosevelt (1882–1945), 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 to 1945 | Winner |
| 1989 | Otto Friedrich | Glenn Gould: A Life and Variations | Glenn Gould (1932–1982), Canadian pianist | Finalist |
| 1989 | Bil Gilbert | God Gave Us This Country: Tekamthi and the First American Civil War | | Finalist |
| 1989 | Roger Morris | Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician | Richard Nixon (1913–1994), 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974 | Finalist |
| 1989 | Tobias Wolff | This Boy’s Life: A Memoir | | Finalist |
| 1990 | Robert A. Caro | Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. II | Lyndon Johnson (1908–1973), 36th president of the United States, serving from 1963 to 1969 | Winner |
| 1990 | Richard Rhodes | A Hole in the World: An American Boyhood | | Finalist |
| 1990 | T. H. Watkins | Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes | Harold L. Ickes (1874-1952), American politician | Finalist |
| 1990 | John Espey | Strong Drink, Strong Language | | Finalist |
| 1990 | Patricia O'Toole | The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends, 1880-1918 | Henry Adams (1838–1918), American historian and Adams political family member | Finalist |
| 1991 | Philip Roth | Patrimony: A True Story | | Winner |
| 1991 | Diane Middlebrook | Anne Sexton: A Biography | Anne Sexton (1928-1974), American poet | Finalist |
| 1991 | Art Spiegelman | Maus II | | Finalist |
| 1991 | John Cheever | The Journals of John Cheever | John Cheever (1912–1982), American novelist and short story writer | Finalist |
| 1991 | Robert Kanigel | The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan | Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920), Indian mathematician | Finalist |
| 1992 | Carol Brightman | Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World | Mary McCarthy (1912–1989), American writer | Winner |
| 1992 | Walter Isaacson | Kissinger | Henry Kissinger (1923–2023), German-born American politician, diplomat, and geopolitical consultant | Finalist |
| 1992 | Paul Hendrickson | Looking for the Light: The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott | Marion Post Wolcott (1910–1990), American photographer | Finalist |
| 1992 | Jack Beatty | The Rascal King: The Life and Times of James Michael Curley, 1874-1958 | James Michael Curley (1874–1958), American politician | Finalist |
| 1992 | David McCullough | Truman | Harry S. Truman (1884–1972), 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953 | Finalist |
| 1993 | Edmund White | Genet | Jean Genet (1910–1986), French writer | Winner |
| 1993 | James Merrill | A Different Person | | Finalist |
| 1993 | David Levering Lewis | W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 | W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), American writer and civil rights activist | Finalist |
| 1993 | Alice Kaplan | French Lessons | | Finalist |
| 1993 | James Miller | The Passion of Michael Foucault | Michael Foucault (1926–1984), French philosopher | Finalist |
| 1994 | Mikal Gilmore | Shot in the Heart | | Winner |
| 1994 | Brenda Maddox | D.H. Lawrence: The Story of a Marriage | D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930), English writer and poet | Finalist |
| 1994 | Edward O. Wilson | Naturalist | autobiography of Edward O. Wilson (1929–2021), American biologist and entomologist | Finalist |
| 1994 | Julia Frey | Toulouse-Lautrec | Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), French painter and illustrator | Finalist |
| 1994 | Neal Gabler | Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity | Walter Winchell (1897–1972), American gossip columnist | Finalist |
| 1995 | Robert Polito | Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson | Jim Thompson (1906–1977), American writer | Winner |
| 1995 | Robert Richardson Jr. | Emerson: The Mind on Fire | Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), American philosopher, essayist, and poet | Finalist |
| 1995 | John Hockenberry | Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs and Declarations of Independence | | Finalist |
| 1995 | Mary Karr | The Liars’ Club | | Finalist |
| 1995 | David S. Reynolds | Walt Whitman’s America | Walt Whitman (1819–1892), American poet, essayist and journalist | Finalist |
| 1996 | Frank McCourt | Angela's Ashes | | Winner |
| 1996 | Jan Swafford | Charles Ives: A Life in Music | Charles Ives (1874–1954), American modernist composer | Finalist |
| 1996 | David Hajdu | Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn | Billy Strayhorn (1915–1967), American musician, composer, lyricist and arranger | Finalist |
| 1996 | Peter Conn | Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography | Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973), American writer | Finalist |
| 1996 | Alan Shapiro | The Last Happy Occasion | | Finalist |
| 1997 | James Tobin | Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II | Ernie Pyle (1900–1945), American journalist and war correspondent | Winner |
| 1997 | Joseph Ellis | American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson | Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), 3rd president of the United States, serving from 1801 to 1809 | Finalist |
| 1997 | Hermione Lee | Virginia Woolf | Virginia Woolf (1882– 1941), English modernist writer | Finalist |
| 1997 | Doris Lessing | Walking in the Shade | | Finalist |
| 1998 | Sylvia Nasar | A Beautiful Mind | John Nash (1928–2015), American mathematician | Winner |
| 1998 | Amanda Vaill | Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story | | Finalist |
| 1998 | David Remnick | King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero | Muhammad Ali (1942–2016), American boxer, philanthropist and activist | Finalist |
| 1998 | Homer H. Hickman Jr. | Rocket Boys: A Memoir | | Finalist |
| 1998 | Ron Chernow | Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. | John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937), American business magnate and philanthropist | Finalist |
| 1999 | Henry Wiencek | The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White | | Winner |
| 1999 | Richard Holmes | Coleridge: Vol. II: Darker Reflections | Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), English poet | Finalist |
| 1999 | Jean Strouse | Morgan: American Financier | J. P. Morgan (1837–1913), American businessman | Finalist |
| 1999 | Judith Thurman | Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette | Colette (1873–1954), French writeír | Finalist |
| 1999 | Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones | The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times | | Finalist |
| 2000 | Herbert P. Bix | Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan | Hirohito (1901–1989), Emperor of Japan from 1926 to 1989 | Winner |
| 2000 | Viktor Klemperer | I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-1945 | | Finalist |
| 2000 | Jean-Yves Tadie | Marcel Proust: A Life | Marcel Proust (1871–1922), French novelist, critic and essayist | Finalist |
| 2000 | David Nasaw | The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst | William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951), American newspaper publisher | Finalist |
| 2000 | Robin Marantz Henig | The Monk in the Garden: The Lost and Found Genius of Gregor Mendel, the Father of Genetics | Gregor Mendel (1822–1884), Silesian scientist and Augustinian friar | Finalist |
| 2001 | Adam Sisman | Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson | James Boswell (1740–1795), Scottish lawyer, diarist, and author | Winner |
| 2001 | Paula Fox | Borrowed Finery: A Memoir | | Finalist |
| 2001 | Katherine Clark | Milking the Moon: A Southerner’s Story of Life on This Planet | | Finalist |
| 2001 | David Hajdu | Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina | | Finalist |
| 2001 | Barry Werth | The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal | Newton Arvin (1900–1963), American literary critic and academic | Finalist |
| 2002 | Janet Browne | Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, Vol. II | Charles Darwin (1809–1882), English naturalist and biologist | Winner |
| 2002 | Edmund S. Morgan | Benjamin Franklin | Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), American polymath and a Founding Father of the United States | Finalist |
| 2002 | Robert A. Caro | Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson | Lyndon Johnson (1908–1973), 36th president of the United States, serving from 1963 to 1969 | Finalist |
| 2002 | Elizabeth Gilbert | The Last American Man | Eustace Conway (born 1961), American naturalist | Finalist |
| 2002 | Mark Zwonitzer with Charles Hirshberg | Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music | The Carter Family, traditional American folk music group (1927–1956) | Finalist |
| 2003 | William Taubman | Khrushchev: The Man and His Era | Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971), First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union | Winner |
| 2003 | Blake Bailey | A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates | Richard Yates (1926–1992), American novelist | Finalist |
| 2003 | George Marsden | Jonathan Edwards: A Life | Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), American preacher and theologian | Finalist |
| 2003 | Carol Loeb Shloss | Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake | Lucia Joyce (1907–1982), Professional dancer and the daughter of James Joyce and Nora Barnacle | Finalist |
| 2003 | Paul Elie | The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage | | Finalist |
| 2004 | Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan | de Kooning: An American Master | Willem de Kooning, Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist (1904– 1997) | Winner |
| 2004 | Ron Chernow | Alexander Hamilton | Alexander Hamilton, American founding father and statesman (1757–1804) | Finalist |
| 2004 | Bob Dylan | Chronicles: Vol. 1 | Bob Dylan (born 1941), American singer-songwriter, author and artist | Finalist |
| 2004 | John Guy | Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart | Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587), Queen of Scotland from 1542 to 1567 | Finalist |
| 2004 | Stephen Greenblatt | Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare | William Shakespeare, English poet, playwright, and actor (1564–1616) | Finalist |
| 2005 | Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin | American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer | J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967), American theoretical physicist, known as "father of the atomic bomb" | Winner |
| 2005 | Carolyn Burke | Lee Miller: A Life | Lee Miller (1907–1977), American photographer | Finalist |
| 2005 | Jonathan Coe | Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson | B. S. Johnson (1933–1973), English novelist, poet and critic | Finalist |
| 2005 | Ron Powers | Mark Twain: A Life | Mark Twain (1835–1910), American author and humorist | Finalist |
| 2005 | Doris Kearns Goodwin | Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln | Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 to 1865 | Finalist |
| 2006 | Julie Phillips | James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon | James Tiptree Jr. (1915–1987), American writer | Winner |
| 2006 | Jason Roberts | A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveler | James Holman (1786–1857), British adventurer | Finalist |
| 2006 | Taylor Branch | At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968 | | Finalist |
| 2006 | Frederick Brown | Flaubert: A Biography | Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), French novelist | Finalist |
| 2006 | Debby Applegate | The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher | Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887), American clergyman and abolitionist | Finalist |
| 2007 | Tim Jeal | Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer | Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904), Welsh-American explorer, journalist and politician | Winner |
| 2007 | John Richardson | A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917–1932 | Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), Spanish painter and sculptor, known for co-founding the Cubist movement | Finalist |
| 2007 | Hermione Lee | Edith Wharton | Edith Wharton (1862 –1937), American novelist, short story writer, designer | Finalist |
| 2007 | Arnold Rampersad | Ralph Ellison | Ralph Ellison (1913-1994), American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer | Finalist |
| 2007 | Claire Tomalin | Thomas Hardy: the Time-Torn Man | Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), English novelist and poet | Finalist |
| 2008 | Patrick French | The World is What it is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul | V. S. Naipaul (1932–2018), British novelist and non-fiction writer | Winner |
| 2008 | Paul J. Giddings | Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching | Ida B. Wells, African-American civil rights activist (1862–1931) | Finalist |
| 2008 | Steve Coll | The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in an American Century | | Finalist |
| 2008 | Annette Gordon-Reed | The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family | | Finalist |
| 2008 | Brenda Wineapple | White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson | | Finalist |
| 2009 | Blake Bailey | Cheever: A Life | John Cheever (1912–1982), American novelist and short story writer | Winner |
| 2009 | Stanislao G. Pugliese | Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone | Ignazio Silone (1900–1978), Italian political leader and writer, known for his anti-Fascist novels during World War II | Finalist |
| 2009 | Brad Gooch | Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor | Flannery O'Connor (1925–1964), American writer | Finalist |
| 2009 | Martha A. Sandweiss | Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line | | Finalist |
| 2009 | Benjamin Moser | Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector | Clarice Lispector (1920–1977), Brazilian novelist and short story writer | Finalist |
| 2010 | Sarah Bakewell | How To Live, Or A Life Of Montaigne | Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, and statesman | Winner |
| 2010 | Yunte Huang | Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective And His Rendezvous With American History | Charlie Chan, Fictional detective | Finalist |
| 2010 | Tom Segev | Simon Wiesenthal: The Lives And Legends | Simon Wiesenthal (1908–2005), Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter | Finalist |
| 2010 | Thomas Powers | The Killing Of Crazy Horse | | Finalist |
| 2010 | Selina Hastings | The Secret Lives Of Somerset Maugham: A Biography | W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965), English playwright and writer | Finalist |
| 2011 | John Lewis Gaddis | George F. Kennan: An American Life | George F. Kennan (1904–2005), American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian | Winner |
| 2011 | Ezra F. Vogel | Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China | Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997), Chinese politician and leader from 1978 to 1989 | Finalist |
| 2011 | Paul Hendrickson | Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934–1961 | Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), American author and journalist | Finalist |
| 2011 | Mary Gabriel | Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of the Revolution | Karl Marx (1818–1883), German philosopher | Finalist |
| 2011 | Manning Marable | Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention | Malcolm X (1925–1965), African-American human rights activist | Finalist |
| 2012 | Robert A. Caro | The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson | Lyndon Johnson (1908–1973), 36th president of the United States, serving from 1963 to 1969 | Winner |
| 2012 | Lisa Cohen | All We Know: Three Lives | | Finalist |
| 2012 | Michael Gorra | Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece | Henry James (1843–1916), American-born British writer and literary critic | Finalist |
| 2012 | Lisa Jarnot | Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus: A Biography | Robert Duncan (1919–1988), American poet | Finalist |
| 2012 | Tom Reiss | The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo | | Finalist |
| 2013 | Leo Damrosch | Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World | Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and cleric | Winner |
| 2013 | John Elio Gardiner | Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven | Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), German composer | Finalist |
| 2013 | Mark Thompson | Birth Certificate: The Story of Danilo Kis | Danilo Kis (1935–1989), Yugoslav writer | Finalist |
| 2013 | Linda Leavell | Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore | Marianne Moore (1887–1972), American poet | Finalist |
| 2013 | Scott Anderson | Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East | | Finalist |
| 2014 | John Lahr | Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh | Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), American playwright | Winner |
| 2014 | Ian S. MacNiven | Literchoor Is My Beat: A Life of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions | James Laughlin (1914–1997), American publisher and poet | Finalist |
| 2014 | S. C. Gwynne | Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson | Stonewall Jackson (1824–1863), Confederate States Army general | Finalist |
| 2014 | Miriam Pawel | The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography | Cesar Chavez (1927–1993), American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist | Finalist |
| 2014 | Ezra Greenspan | William Wells Brown: An African American Life | William Wells Brown (1814–1884), African-American abolitionist lecturer, novelist, playwright, and historian | Finalist |
| 2015 | Charlotte Gordon | Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley | Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), English writer and intellectual and Mary Shelley (1797–1851), English writer | Winner |
| 2015 | T. J. Stiles | Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America | George Armstrong Custer (1839–1876), American general | Finalist |
| 2015 | Karin Wieland and Shelly Frisch | Dietrich and Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives | | Finalist |
| 2015 | Terry Alford | Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth | John Wilkes Booth (1838–1865), American stage actor and assassin of Abraham Lincoln | Finalist |
| 2015 | Rosemary Sullivan | Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva | Svetlana Alliluyeva (1926 –2011), Youngest child of Josef Stalin who defected to the U.S. in 1967 | Finalist |
| 2016 | Ruth Franklin | Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life | Shirley Jackson (1916–1965), American writer | Winner |
| 2016 | Joe Jackson | Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary | Black Elk (1863–1950), Native American religious figure | Finalist |
| 2016 | Frances Wilson | Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey | Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859), English essayist | Finalist |
| 2016 | Michael Tisserand | Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White | George Herriman (1880–1944), American cartoonist (1880–1944) | Finalist |
| 2016 | Nigel Cliff | Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story | Van Cliburn (1934–February 27, 2013), American pianist | Finalist |
| 2017 | Caroline Fraser | Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder | Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957), American writer, teacher, and journalist | Winner |
| 2017 | William Taubman | Gorbachev: His Life and Times | Mikhail Gorbachev (born 1931), Leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991 | Finalist |
| 2017 | Ken Whyte | Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times | Herbert Hoover (1874–1964), 31st president of the United States, serving from 1929 to 1933 | Finalist |
| 2017 | Edmund Gordon | The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography | Angela Carter (1940–1992), English novelist | Finalist |
| 2017 | Howard Markel | The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek | | Finalist |
| 2018 | Christopher Bonanos | Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous | Arthur Fellig, also known as Weegee, (1899–1968), American photographer and photojournalist | Winner |
| 2018 | Yunte Huang | Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History | Chang and Eng Bunker, (1811–1874) Siamese-American cojoined twin brothers | Finalist |
| 2018 | Craig Brown | Ma'am Darling: Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret | Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon (1930–2002), Daughter of King George VI | Finalist |
| 2018 | Jane Leavy | The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created | Babe Ruth (1895–1948), American baseball player | Finalist |
| 2018 | Mark Lamster | The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century | Philip Johnson (1906–2005), American architect | Finalist |
| 2019 | Josh Levin | The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth | Linda Taylor | Winner |
| 2019 | Sonia Purnell | A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II | Virginia Hall (1906–1982), American spy | Finalist |
| 2019 | Charles King | Gods of the Upper Air: How A Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century | | Finalist |
| 2019 | Lucasta Miller | L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated Female Byron | Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838), British poet and novelist | Finalist |
| 2019 | George Packer | Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century | Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010), American diplomat and author | Finalist |
| 2020 | Amy Stanley | Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World | | Winner |
| 2020 | Heather Clark | Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath | Sylvia Plath, American poet, novelist and short story writer (1932–1963) | Finalist |
| 2020 | Les Payne and Tamara Payne | The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X | Malcolm X (1925–1965), African-American human rights activist | Finalist |
| 2020 | Maggie Doherty | The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s | | Finalist |
| 2020 | Zachary D. Carter | The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes | John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), English economist | Finalist |
| 2021 | Rebecca Donner | All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler | Mildred Harnack (1902-1943), American literary historian, author, and member of the German resistance against the Nazi regime | Winner |
| 2021 | Susan Bernofsky | Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser | Robert Walser (1878-1956), Swiss-German modernist author | Finalist |
| 2021 | Alexander Nemerov | Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York | Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011), American abstract expressionist painter | Finalist |
| 2021 | Mark Harris | Mike Nichols: A Life | Mike Nichols (1931–2014), American television director, writer, producer and comedian | Finalist |
| 2021 | Keisha N. Blain | Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America | Fannie Lou Hamer (1917–1977), American civil rights activist | Finalist |
| 2022 | Beverly Gage | G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century | J. Edgar Hoover (1895–1972), American, first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation | Winner |
| 2022 | Kerri K. Greenidge | The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family | | Finalist |
| 2022 | Jennifer Homans | Mr. B: George Balanchine's 20th Century | George Balanchine (1904–1983), Georgian-American ballet choreographer | Finalist |
| 2022 | Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman | Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life | | Finalist |
| 2022 | Aaron Sachs | Up From the Depths: Herman Melville, Louis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times | | Finalist |
| 2023 | Jonny Steinberg | Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage | | Winner |
| 2023 | Jonathan Eig | King: A Life | Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968), African-American civil rights leader | Finalist |
| 2023 | Gregg Hecimovich | The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of the Bondwoman's Narrative | Hannah Crafts, African-American writer | Finalist |
| 2023 | Yunte Huang | Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong’s Rendezvous with American History | Anna May Wong (1905–1961), Chinese-American actress | Finalist |
| 2023 | Rachel Shteir | Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disruptor | Betty Friedan (1921–2006), American feminist writer and activist | Finalist |