# Pulitzer Prize for Biography

Pulitzer Prize :
Joseph Pulitzer
Columbia University
Pulitzers by year
Winners
Multi-award winners
Special Citations and Awards :
Journalism :
Letters
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Memoir or Autobiography
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vte :
The Pulitzer Prize for Biography is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. The award honors "a distinguished and appropriately documented biography by an American author." Award winners received $15,000 USD.
From 1917 to 2022, this prize was known as the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and was awarded to a distinguished biography, autobiography or memoir by an American author or co-authors, published during the preceding calendar year. Thus it is one of the original Pulitzers, for the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that year.

## Recipients

In its first 97 years to 2013, the Biography Pulitzer was awarded 97 times. Two were given in 1938, and none in 1962.

### 1910s-1940s

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners, 1917-1949 :
| Year | Author | Title |
| 1917 | Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliott, assisted by Florence Howe Hall | Julia Ward Howe |
| 1918 | William Cabell Bruce | Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed |
| 1919 | Henry Adams | The Education of Henry Adams |
| 1920 | Albert J. Beveridge | The Life of John Marshall, 4 vols. |
| 1921 | Edward Bok | The Americanization of Edward Bok: The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After |
| 1922 | Hamlin Garland | A Daughter of the Middle Border |
| 1923 | Burton J. Hendrick | The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page |
| 1924 | Michael I. Pupin | From Immigrant to Inventor |
| 1925 | M. A. De Wolfe Howe | Barrett Wendell and His Letters |
| 1926 | Harvey Cushing | The Life of Sir William Osler, 2 vols. |
| 1927 | Emory Holloway | Whitman |
| 1928 | Charles Edward Russell | The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas |
| 1929 | Burton J. Hendrick | The Training of an American: The Earlier Life and Letters of Walter H. Page |
| 1930 | Marquis James | The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston |
| 1931 | Henry James | Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard University, 1869–1901 |
| 1932 | Henry F. Pringle | Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography |
| 1933 | Allan Nevins | Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage |
| 1934 | Tyler Dennett | John Hay |
| 1935 | Douglas S. Freeman | R. E. Lee |
| 1936 | Ralph Barton Perry | The Thought and Character of William James |
| 1937 | Allan Nevins | Hamilton Fish |
| 1938 | Marquis James | Andrew Jackson, 2 vols. |
| 1938 | Odell Shepard | Pedlar's Progress: The Life of Bronson Alcott |
| 1939 | Carl Van Doren | Benjamin Franklin |
| 1940 | Ray Stannard Baker | Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters. Vols. VII and VIII |
| 1941 | Ola Elizabeth Winslow | Jonathan Edwards, 1703–1758: a biography |
| 1942 | Forrest Wilson | Crusader in Crinoline: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe |
| 1943 | Samuel Eliot Morison | Admiral of the Ocean Sea |
| 1944 | Carleton Mabee | The American Leonardo: The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse |
| 1945 | Russel Blaine Nye | George Bancroft: Brahmin Rebel |
| 1946 | Linnie Marsh Wolfe | Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir |
| 1947 | William Allen White | The Autobiography of William Allen White |
| 1948 | Margaret Clapp | Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow |
| 1949 | Robert E. Sherwood | Roosevelt and Hopkins |

### 1950s-1970s

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners, 1950-1979 :
| Year | Author | Title |
| 1950 | Samuel Flagg Bemis | John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy |
| 1951 | Margaret Louise Coit | John C. Calhoun: American Portrait |
| 1952 | Merlo J. Pusey | Charles Evans Hughes |
| 1953 | David J. Mays | Edmund Pendleton 1721–1803 |
| 1954 | Charles A. Lindbergh | The Spirit of St. Louis |
| 1955 | William S. White | The Taft Story |
| 1956 | Talbot Faulkner Hamlin | Benjamin Henry Latrobe |
| 1957 | John F. Kennedy | Profiles in Courage |
| 1958 | Douglas Southall Freeman with John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth | George Washington, vols. I-VII |
| 1959 | Arthur Walworth | Woodrow Wilson, American Prophet |
| 1960 | Samuel Eliot Morison | John Paul Jones |
| 1961 | David Donald | Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War |
| 1962 | No award presented | No award presented |
| 1963 | Leon Edel | Henry James |
| 1964 | Walter Jackson Bate | John Keats |
| 1965 | Ernest Samuels | Henry Adams, 3 vols. |
| 1966 | Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. | A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House |
| 1967 | Justin Kaplan | Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain |
| 1968 | George F. Kennan | Memoirs |
| 1969 | Benjamin Lawrence Reid | The Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends |
| 1970 | Thomas Harry Williams | Huey Long |
| 1971 | Lawrance Thompson | Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 1915–1938, |
| 1972 | Joseph P. Lash | Eleanor and Franklin |
| 1973 | W. A. Swanberg | Luce and His Empire |
| 1974 | Louis Sheaffer | O'Neill, Son and Artist |
| 1975 | Robert Caro | The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York |
| 1976 | R. W. B. Lewis | Edith Wharton: A Biography |
| 1977 | John E. Mack | A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence |
| 1978 | Walter Jackson Bate | Samuel Johnson |
| 1979 | Leonard Baker | Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews |

### 1980s

Entries from this point on include the finalists listed after the winner for each year.
Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners and finalists, 1980-1989 :
| Year | Author | Title | Result |
| 1980 | Edmund Morris | The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt | Winner |
| 1980 | Ernest Samuels | Bernard Berenson, The Making of a Connoisseur | Finalist |
| 1980 | Meryle Secrest | Being Bernard Berenson | Finalist |
| 1980 | Geoffrey Wolff | The Duke of Deception | Finalist |
| 1981 | Robert K. Massie | Peter the Great: His Life and World | Winner |
| 1981 | Justin Kaplan | Walt Whitman: A Life | Finalist |
| 1981 | Ronald Steel | Walter Lippmann and the American Century | Finalist |
| 1982 | William S. McFeely | Grant: A Biography | Winner |
| 1982 | Gay Wilson Allen | Waldo Emerson | Finalist |
| 1982 | David McCullough | Mornings on Horseback | Finalist |
| 1983 | Russell Baker | Growing Up | Winner |
| 1983 | Ted Morgan | Churchill: Young Man in a Hurry, 1874–1915 | Finalist |
| 1983 | Richard Norton Smith | Thomas E. Dewey and His Times | Finalist |
| 1984 | Louis R. Harlan | Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915 | Winner |
| 1984 | Fred Kaplan | Thomas Carlyle: A Biography | Finalist |
| 1984 | Kenneth Manning | Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just | Finalist |
| 1985 | Kenneth Silverman | The Life and Times of Cotton Mather | Winner |
| 1985 | Howard M. Feinstein | Becoming William James | Finalist |
| 1985 | Michael Mott | The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton | Finalist |
| 1986 | Elizabeth Frank | Louise Bogan: A Portrait | Winner |
| 1986 | John Hope Franklin | George Washington Williams: A Biography | Finalist |
| 1986 | Frida Scheps Weinstein | A Hidden Childhood: A Jewish Girl's Sanctuary in a French Convent, 1942–1945 | Finalist |
| 1987 | David J. Garrow | Bearing The Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference | Winner |
| 1987 | Joseph Frank | Dostoevsky: The Stir of Liberation, 1860–1865 | Finalist |
| 1987 | Leonard L. Richards | The Life and Times of Congressman John Quincy Adams | Finalist |
| 1987 | A.M. Sperber | Murrow: His Life and Times | Finalist |
| 1988 | David Herbert Donald | Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe | Winner |
| 1988 | Kenneth S. Lynn | Hemingway | Finalist |
| 1988 | John Owen McCormick | George Santayana: A Biography | Finalist |
| 1989 | Richard Ellmann | Oscar Wilde | Winner |
| 1989 | Peter Gay | Freud: A Life for Our Time | Finalist |
| 1989 | Arnold Rampersad | The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume II, 1941–1967: I Dream a World | Finalist |
| 1989 | Neil Sheehan | A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam | Finalist |

### 1990s

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners and finalists, 1990-1999 :
| Year | Author(s) | Title | Result |
| 1990 | Sebastian de Grazia | Machiavelli in Hell | Winner |
| 1990 | Jill Ker Conway | The Road from Coorain | Finalist |
| 1990 | Reynolds Price | Clear Pictures: First Loves, First Guides | Finalist |
| 1990 | Geoffrey C. Ward | A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt | Finalist |
| 1991 | Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith | Jackson Pollock: An American Saga | Winner |
| 1991 | Patricia O'Toole | The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends 1880–1918 | Finalist |
| 1991 | Joseph Frazier Wall | Alfred I. Du Pont: The Man and His Family | Finalist |
| 1992 | Lewis B. Puller | Fortunate Son: The Autobiography of Lewis B. Puller Jr. | Winner |
| 1992 | William S. McFeely | Frederick Douglass | Finalist |
| 1992 | Michael Shelden | Orwell: The Authorized Biography | Finalist |
| 1993 | David McCullough | Truman | Winner |
| 1993 | James Gleick | Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman | Finalist |
| 1993 | Walter Isaacson | Kissinger: A Biography | Finalist |
| 1994 | David Levering Lewis | W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 | Winner |
| 1994 | Deborah Baker | In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding | Finalist |
| 1994 | Edmund White | Genet: A Biography | Finalist |
| 1995 | Joan D. Hedrick | Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life | Winner |
| 1995 | Roger K. Newman | Hugo Black: A Biography | Finalist |
| 1995 | Stacy Schiff | Saint-Exupery: A Biography | Finalist |
| 1996 | Jack Miles | God: A Biography | Winner |
| 1996 | John Loughery | John Sloan: Painter and Rebel | Finalist |
| 1996 | Maynard Solomon | Mozart: A Life | Finalist |
| 1997 | Frank McCourt | Angela's Ashes: A Memoir | Winner |
| 1997 | Kim Barnes | In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country | Finalist |
| 1997 | Hershel Parker | Herman Melville: A Biography, Volume 1, 1819–1851 | Finalist |
| 1998 | Katharine Graham | Personal History | Winner |
| 1998 | James H. Jones | Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public-Private Life | Finalist |
| 1998 | Sam Tanenhaus | Whittaker Chambers: A Biography | Finalist |
| 1999 | A. Scott Berg | Lindbergh | Winner |
| 1999 | Francine du Plessix Gray | At Home with the Marquis de Sade: A Life | Finalist |
| 1999 | Sylvia Nasar | A Beautiful Mind | Finalist |

### 2000s

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners and finalists, 2000-2009 :
| Year | Author(s) | Title | Result |
| 2000 | Stacy Schiff | Vera, Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov | Winner |
| 2000 | Bobbie Ann Mason | Clear Springs: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2000 | Dava Sobel | Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love | Finalist |
| 2001 | David Levering Lewis | W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963 | Winner |
| 2001 | H.W. Brands | The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin | Finalist |
| 2001 | Christoph Wolff | Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician | Finalist |
| 2002 | David McCullough | John Adams | Winner |
| 2002 | Jimmy Carter | An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood | Finalist |
| 2002 | Jean Edward Smith | Grant | Finalist |
| 2003 | Robert Caro | Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson | Winner |
| 2003 | Nicholas Dawidoff | The Fly Swatter: A Portrait of an Exceptional Character | Finalist |
| 2003 | Lewis Lockwood | Beethoven: The Music and the Life | Finalist |
| 2004 | William Taubman | Khrushchev: The Man and His Era | Winner |
| 2004 | James Gleick | Isaac Newton | Finalist |
| 2004 | Hayden Herrera | Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work | Finalist |
| 2005 | Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan | de Kooning: An American Master | Winner |
| 2005 | Stephen Greenblatt | Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare | Finalist |
| 2005 | William Souder | Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of The Birds of America | Finalist |
| 2006 | Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin | American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer | Winner |
| 2006 | Joan Didion | The Year of Magical Thinking | Finalist |
| 2006 | Megan Marshall | The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism | Finalist |
| 2007 | Debby Applegate | The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher | Winner |
| 2007 | Arthur H. Cash | John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty | Finalist |
| 2007 | David Nasaw | Andrew Carnegie | Finalist |
| 2008 | John Matteson | Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father | Winner |
| 2008 | Martin Duberman | The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein | Finalist |
| 2008 | Zachary Leader | The Life of Kingsley Amis | Finalist |
| 2009 | Jon Meacham | American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House | Winner |
| 2009 | H.W. Brands | Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt | Finalist |
| 2009 | Steve Coll | The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century | Finalist |

### 2010s

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners and finalists, 2010-2019 :
| Year | Author(s) | Title | Result |
| 2010 | T. J. Stiles | The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt | Winner |
| 2010 | Blake Bailey | Cheever: A Life | Finalist |
| 2010 | John Milton Cooper, Jr. | Woodrow Wilson: A Biography | Finalist |
| 2011 | Ron Chernow | Washington: A Life | Winner |
| 2011 | Alan Brinkley | The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century | Finalist |
| 2011 | Michael O'Brien | Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon | Finalist |
| 2012 | John Lewis Gaddis | George F. Kennan: An American Life | Winner |
| 2012 | Mary Gabriel | Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution | Finalist |
| 2012 | Manning Marable | Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention | Finalist |
| 2013 | Tom Reiss | The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo | Winner |
| 2013 | Michael Gorra | Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece | Finalist |
| 2013 | David Nasaw | The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy | Finalist |
| 2014 | Megan Marshall | Margaret Fuller: A New American Life | Winner |
| 2014 | Leo Damrosch | Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World | Finalist |
| 2014 | Jonathan Sperber | Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life | Finalist |
| 2015 | David I. Kertzer | The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe | Winner |
| 2015 | Thomas Brothers | Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism | Finalist |
| 2015 | Stephen Kotkin | Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 | Finalist |
| 2016 | William Finnegan | Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life | Winner |
| 2016 | Elizabeth Alexander | The Light of the World: A Memoir | Finalist |
| 2016 | T. J. Stiles | Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America | Finalist |
| 2017 | Hisham Matar | The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between | Winner |
| 2017 | Susan Faludi | In the Darkroom | Finalist |
| 2017 | Paul Kalanithi | When Breath Becomes Air | Finalist |
| 2018 | Caroline Fraser | Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder | Winner |
| 2018 | John A. Farrell | Richard Nixon: The Life | Finalist |
| 2018 | Kay Redfield Jamison | Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character | Finalist |
| 2019 | Jeffrey C. Stewart | The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke | Winner |
| 2019 | Max Boot | The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam | Finalist |
| 2019 | Caroline Weber | Proust's Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siècle Paris | Finalist |

### 2020s

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography winners and finalists, 2020-present :
| Year | Author(s) | Work | Result |
| 2020 | Benjamin Moser | Sontag: Her Life and Work | Winner |
| 2020 | George Packer | Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century | Finalist |
| 2020 | Deirdre Bair | Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me | Finalist |
| 2021 | Les Payne and Tamara Payne | The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X | Winner |
| 2021 | Heather Clark | Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath | Finalist |
| 2021 | Amy Stanley | Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World | Finalist |
| 2022 | Winfred Rembert and Erin I. Kelly | Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist's Memoir of the Jim Crow South | Winner |
| 2022 | Richard Zenith | Pessoa: A Biography | Finalist |
| 2022 | Janice P. Nimura | The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine | Finalist |
| 2023 | Beverly Gage | G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century | Winner |
| 2023 | Jennifer Homans | Mr. B: George Balanchine's 20th Century | Finalist |
| 2023 | Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa | His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice | Finalist |
| 2024 | Jonathan Eig | King: A Life | Winner |
| 2024 | Ilyon Woo | Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom | Winner |
| 2024 | Tracy Daugherty | Larry McMurtry: A Life | Finalist |

## Repeat winners

Ten people have won the Pulitzer for Biography or Autobiography twice:
* Burton J. Hendrick, 1923, 1929
* Allan Nevins, 1933, 1937
* Marquis James, 1930, 1938
* Douglas S. Freeman, 1935, 1958
* Samuel Eliot Morison, 1943, 1960
* Walter Jackson Bate, 1964, 1978
* David Herbert Donald, 1961, 1988
* David Levering Lewis, 1994, 2001
* David McCullough, 1993, 2002
* Robert Caro, 1975, 2003
W. A. Swanberg was selected by the Pulitzer board in 1962 and 1973; however, the trustees of Columbia University (then responsible for conferral of the awards) overturned the proposed 1962 prize for Citizen Hearst.