# National Book Award for Nonfiction

The National Book Award for Nonfiction is one of five US annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize outstanding literary work by US citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers". The panelists are five "writers who are known to be doing great work in their genre or field".
The original National Book Awards recognized the "Most Distinguished" biography and nonfiction books (two) of 1935 and 1936, and the "Favorite" nonfiction books of 1937 to 1940. The "Bookseller Discovery" and the "Most Original Book" sometimes recognized nonfiction. (See below.)
The general "Nonfiction" award was one of three when the National Book Awards were re-established in 1950 for 1949 publications, which the National Book Foundation considers the origin of its current Awards series. From 1964 to 1983, under different administrators, there were multiple nonfiction categories.
The current Nonfiction award recognizes one book written by a U.S. citizen and published in the U.S. from December 1 to November 30. The National Book Foundation accepts nominations from publishers until June 15, requires mailing nominated books to the panelists by August 1, and announces five finalists in October. The winner is announced on the day of the final ceremony in November. The award is $10,000 and a bronze sculpture; other finalists get $1000, a medal, and a citation written by the panel. The sculpture by Louise Nevelson dates from the 1980 awards. The $10,000 and $1000 cash prizes and autumn recognition for current-year publications date from 1984.
About 200 books were nominated for the 1984 award when the single award for general nonfiction was restored.

## Multiple nonfiction categories (1964–1983)

For the 1963/1964 cycle, three new award categories replaced "Nonfiction": Arts and Letters; History and Biography; Science, Philosophy and Religion. For the next twenty years there were at least three award categories for nonfiction books marketed to adult readers and the term "Nonfiction" was used only 1980 to 1983 ("General Nonfiction", hardcover and paperback).
Scope of "Nonfiction" as covered in the following tables :
| timespan | of all awards | list of "Nonfiction" categories covered below |
| 1964–1966 | 3 of 5 | Arts and Letters; History and Biography; Science, Philosophy and Religion |
| 1967–1968 | 3 of 6 | Arts and Letters; History and Biography; Science, Philosophy and Religion |
| 1969–1971 | 3 of 7 | Arts and Letters; History and Biography; "The Sciences" or "Philosophy and Religion" alternating |
| 1972–1975 | 6 of 10 | Arts and Letters; Biography; Contemporary Affairs; History; Philosophy and Religion; The Sciences |
| 1976 | 3 of 6 | Arts and Letters; Contemporary Affairs; History and biography |
| 1980 | 16 of 30+ | Autobiography; Biography; Current Interest; General Nonfiction; History; Religion/Inspiration; Science |
| 1977–1979 | 3 of 7 | Biography and Autobiography; Contemporary Thought; History |
| 1981–1983 | 8 of 20+ | Autobiography/Biography; General Nonfiction; History; Science (each hardcover and paperback) |

## Recipients
### 1935–1940

The National Book Awards for 1935 to 1940 annually recognized the "most distinguished" or "favorite" book of General Nonfiction or simply Nonfiction. In 1935 and 1936 there was distinct award to the most distinguished Biography; both winners were autobiographies. Meanwhile, four of the six general nonfiction winners were autobiographical and one more was a biography. Furthermore, all books were eligible for the "Bookseller Discovery" and "Most Original Book" (two awards); nonfiction winners are listed here. In 1937 and 1939 alone, the New York Times reported close seconds and runners up respectively.
There was only one National Book Award for 1941, the Bookseller Discovery, which recognized a novel; then none until their 1950 revival for 1949 books in three categories including general Nonfiction.
National Book Awards presented to nonfiction books, 1935–1940 :
| Year | Category | Author | Title | Result |
| 1935 | Nonfiction | Anne Morrow Lindbergh | North to the Orient | Winner |
| 1935 | Nonfiction | Vincent Sheean | Personal History | Finalist |
| 1936 | Most Original Book | Della T. Lutes | The Country Kitchen | Winner |
| 1936 | Nonfiction | Van Wyck Brooks | The Flowering of New England: 1815–1865 | Winner |
| 1937 | Most Original Book | Carl Crow | Four Hundred Million Customers: The Experiences—Some Happy, Some Sad, of an American Living in China, and What They Taught Him | Winner |
| 1937 | Nonfiction | Ève Curie | Madame Curie | Winner |
| 1937 | Nonfiction | Lin Yutang | The Importance of Living | Finalist |
| 1938 | Bookseller Discovery | David Fairchild | The World Was My Garden: Travels of a Plant Explorer | Winner |
| 1938 | Most Original Book | Margaret Halsey | With Malice Toward Some | Winner |
| 1938 | Nonfiction | Anne Morrow Lindbergh | Listen! The Wind | Winner |
| 1939 | Nonfiction | Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | Wind, Sand and Stars | Winner |
| 1939 | Nonfiction | Pierre van Paassen | Days of Our Years | Finalist |
| 1940 | Bookseller Discovery | Perry Burgess | Who Walk Alone | Winner |
| 1940 | Nonfiction | Hans Zinsser | As I Remember Him: The Biography of R.S. | Winner |

### 1950s

The first awards in the current series were presented to the best books of 1949 at the annual convention dinner of the booksellers, book publishers, and book manufacturers in New York City, March 16, 1950. There were honorable mentions ("special citations") in the non-fiction category only.
National Book Awards presented to nonfiction books, 1950–1963 :
| Year | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 1950 | Ralph L. Rusk | The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson | Ralph Waldo Emerson, American philosopher, essayist, and poet (1803–1882) | Winner |
| 1950 | Lincoln Barnett | The Universe and Dr. Einstein | | Finalist |
| 1950 | Harry Allen Overstreet | The Mature Mind | | Finalist |
| 1950 | Eleanor Roosevelt | This I Remember | Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States (1933–1945), diplomat, and activist | Finalist |
| 1950 | Lillian Smith | Killers of the Dream | | Finalist |
| 1950 | Kenneth P. Williams | Lincoln Finds a General | | Finalist |
| 1951 | Newton Arvin | Herman Melville | Herman Melville, American writer and poet (1819–1891) | Winner |
| 1952 | Rachel Carson | The Sea Around Us | | Winner |
| 1953 | Bernard De Voto, | The Course of Empire | | Winner |
| 1954 | Bruce Catton | A Stillness at Appomattox | | Winner |
| 1955 | Joseph Wood Krutch | The Measure of Man | | Winner |
| 1956 | Herbert Kubly | An American in Italy | | Winner |
| 1957 | George F. Kennan | Russia Leaves the War | | Winner |
| 1958 | Catherine Drinker Bowen | The Lion and the Throne | Edward Coke, English lawyer and judge | Winner |
| 1959 | J. Christopher Herold | Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël | Madame de Staël, Swiss/French author (1766–1817) | Winner |

### 1960s
#### 1960–1963

National Book Awards presented to nonfiction books, 1960–1963 :
| Year | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 1960 | Richard Ellmann | James Joyce | James Joyce, Irish novelist and poet (1882–1941) | Winner |
| 1961 | William L. Shirer | The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich | Nazi Germany, Germany under control of the Nazi Party, 1933 to 1945 | Winner |
| 1962 | Lewis Mumford | The City in History: Its Origins, its Transformations and its Prospects | | Winner |
| 1963 | Leon Edel | Henry James | Henry James, American-born British writer and literary critic | Winner |

#### 1964–1969

From 1964 to 1969, winners were presented by specific categories (e.g., Arts and Letters). However, finalists were presented in one general nonfiction category. Individual categories of finalists have been guessed.

##### Arts and Letters

National Book Awards presented to nonfiction books, Arts and Letters,1964–1969 :
| Year | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 1964 | Aileen Ward | John Keats: The Making of a Poet | John Keats, English Romantic poet (1795–1821) | Winner |
| 1964 | Walter Jackson Bate | John Keats | John Keats, English Romantic poet (1795–1821) | Finalist |
| 1964 | Francis Steegmuller | Apollinaire: Poet among the Painters | Guillaume Apollinaire, French poet and writer | Finalist |
| 1965 | Eleanor Clark | The Oysters of Locmariaquer | | Winner |
| 1965 | Eric Bentley | The Life of the Drama | | Finalist |
| 1965 | Robert Brustein | The Theater of Revolt: An Approach to Modern Drama | | Finalist |
| 1965 | Edward Dahlberg | Because I Was Flesh | Edward Dahlberg, American writer | Finalist |
| 1965 | Ralph Ellison | Shadow and Act | | Finalist |
| 1965 | Howard Mumford Jones | O Strange New World: American Culture, the Formative Years | | Finalist |
| 1966 | Janet Flanner | Paris Journal, 1944–1965 | | Winner |
| 1966 | Alfred Kazin | Starting Out in the Thirties | | Finalist |
| 1966 | R. W. B. Lewis | Trials of the Word: Essays in American Literature and the Humanistic Tradition | | Finalist |
| 1966 | Philip Rahv | The Myth and the Powerhouse | | Finalist |
| 1966 | Lionel Trilling | Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning | | Finalist |
| 1966 | René Wellek | History of Modern Criticism: 1750–1950 | | Finalist |
| 1967 | Justin Kaplan | Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography | Mark Twain, American author and humorist (1835–1910) | Winner |
| 1967 | Oliver Larkin | Daumier: Man of His Time | Honoré Daumier, French artist (1808–1879) | Finalist |
| 1967 | Frederick A. Pottle | James Boswell: The Earlier Years | James Boswell, 18th-century Scottish lawyer, diarist, and author | Finalist |
| 1967 | Isaac Bashevis Singer | In My Father's Court | Isaac Bashevis Singer, Jewish American author (1903–1991) | Finalist |
| 1967 | Susan Sontag | Against Interpretation and Other Essays | | Finalist |
| 1967 | Lawrance Thompson | Robert Frost: The Early Years | Robert Frost, American poet (1874–1963) | Finalist |
| 1968 | William Troy | Selected Essays | | Winner |
| 1968 | R. P. Blackmur | A Primer of Ignorance | | Finalist |
| 1968 | Frank Conroy | Stop-Time | Frank Conroy, American author | Finalist |
| 1968 | Leonard B. Meyer | Music, the Arts and Ideas | | Finalist |
| 1968 | M. L. Rosenthal | The New Poets | | Finalist |
| 1968 | Stanley Weintraub | Beardsley: A Biography | Aubrey Beardsley, English illustrator and author (1872–1898) | Finalist |
| 1969 | Norman Mailer | The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History | | Winner |
| 1969 | Hannah Arendt | Men in Dark Times | | Finalist |
| 1969 | Peter Gay | Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider | | Finalist |
| 1969 | Gordon S. Haight | George Eliot: A Biography | George Eliot, English novelist, essayist, poet and journalist (1819–1880) | Finalist |
| 1969 | Gertrude Himmelfarb | Victorian Minds | | Finalist |

##### History and Biography

| Year | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 1964 | William H. McNeill | The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community | | Winner |
| 1964 | Shelby Foote | The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. II, Fredericksburg to Meridian | | Finalist |
| 1964 | Richard Hofstadter | Anti-intellectualism in American Life | | Finalist |
| 1964 | Seymour Martin Lipset | The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective | | Finalist |
| 1964 | Peter Lyon | Success Story: The Life and Times of S. S. McClure | S. S. McClure | Finalist |
| 1964 | Bertram D. Wolfe | The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera | Diego Rivera, Mexican muralist (1886–1957) | Finalist |
| 1965 | Louis Fischer | The Life of Lenin | Vladmir Lenin, Russian politician, communist theorist and founder of the Soviet Union | Winner |
| 1965 | Oscar Lewis | Pedro Martinez: A Mexican Peasant and His Family | | Finalist |
| 1965 | R. R. Palmer | Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800 | | Finalist |
| 1965 | Willie Lee Nichols Rose | Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment | Port Royal Experiment, program begun during the American Civil War in which former slaves successfully worked on the land abandoned by planters | Finalist |
| 1965 | Ernest Samuels | Henry Adams: The Major Phase | Henry Adams, American historian and Adams political family member (1838–1918) | Finalist |
| 1965 | Richard J. Whalen | The Founding Father: The Story of Joseph P. Kennedy | Joseph P. Kennedy | Finalist |
| 1966 | Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. | A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House | John F. Kennedy, President of the United States from 1961 to 1963 | Winner |
| 1966 | Irving Brant | The Bill of Rights: Its Origin and Meaning | United States Bill of Rights, First ten amendments to the US Constitution | Finalist |
| 1966 | Edward Chase Kirkland | Charles Francis Adams, Jr., 1835–1915: Patrician at Bay | Charles Francis Adams, Jr., American author and historian (1835–1915) | Finalist |
| 1966 | Richard B. Morris | The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence | | Finalist |
| 1966 | Robert Shaplen | The Lost Revolution: The U.S. in Vietnam, 1946–1966 | Vietnam War, Cold War conflict in Southeast Asia from 1955 to 1975 | Finalist |
| 1966 | Theodore H. White | The Making of the President, 1964 | | Finalist |
| 1967 | Peter Gay | The Enlightenment, Vol. I: The Rise of Modern Paganism | | Winner |
| 1967 | James H. Billington | The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretative History of Russian Culture | | Finalist |
| 1967 | David Brion Davis | The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture | | Finalist |
| 1967 | Martin Duberman | James Russell Lowell | James Russell Lowell, American poet, critic, editor, and diplomate (1819–1891) | Finalist |
| 1967 | Barrington Moore, Jr. | Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World | | Finalist |
| 1967 | Peter Štanský and William Abrahams | Journey to the Frontier: Two roads to the Spanish Civil War | | Finalist |
| 1968 | George F. Kennan | Memoirs: 1925–1950 | George F. Kennan, American diplomat, political scientist and historian (1904–2005) | Winner |
| 1968 | Henry Bragdon | Woodrow Wilson: The Academic Years | Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States from 1913 to 1921 | Finalist |
| 1968 | Louis J. Halle | The Cold War as History | | Finalist |
| 1968 | Roger Hilsman | To Move a Nation: The Politics of Foreign Policy in the Administration of John F. Kennedy | John F. Kennedy, President of the United States from 1961 to 1963 | Finalist |
| 1968 | Nathan Silver | Lost New York | Former New York City buildings | Finalist |
| 1969 | Winthrop Jordan | White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812 | | Winner |
| 1969 | Nuel Pharr Davis | Lawrence and Oppenheimer | Ernest Lawrence, American nuclear physicist (1901–1958), and J. Robert Oppenheimer, American theoretical physicist (1904–1967) | Finalist |
| 1969 | Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. | The Indian Heritage of America | | Finalist |
| 1969 | Norman Mailer | Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republic and Democratic Conventions of 1968 | | Finalist |
| 1969 | David M. Potter | The South and the Sectional Conflict | Origins of the American Civil War | Finalist |

##### Science, Philosophy and Religion

National Book Awards: Nonfiction books, Science, Philosophy and Religion, 1964–1969 :
| Year | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 1964 | Christopher Tunnard and Boris Pushkarev | Man-made America: Chaos or Control? | | Winner |
| 1964 | James Baldwin | The Fire Next Time | | Finalist |
| 1964 | Raymond Fredric Dasmann | The Last Horizon | Conservation biology, Study of threats to biological diversity | Finalist |
| 1964 | Howard Ensign Evans | Wasp Farm | Entomology, Scientific study of insects | Finalist |
| 1964 | Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan | Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians and Irish of New York City | | Finalist |
| 1964 | Stewart Udall | The Quiet Crisis | Conservation of natural resources, Study of threats to biological diversity | Finalist |
| 1965 | Norbert Wiener | God & Golem, Inc.: A Comment on Certain Points Where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion | | Winner |
| 1965 | Walter Ciszek | With God in Russia | Walter Ciszek, Polish-American Jesuit priest and missionary in the Soviet Union | Finalist |
| 1965 | Theodosius Dobzhansky | Heredity and the Nature of Man | | Finalist |
| 1965 | David Hawkins | The Language of Nature: An Essay on the Philosophy of Science | | Finalist |
| 1965 | John Courtney Murray | The Problem of God, Yesterday and Today | | Finalist |
| 1965 | Walter S. Sullivan | We Are Not Alone: The Search for Intelligent Life on Other Worlds | | Finalist |
| 1966 | Charles Frankel | "The Love of Anxiety" and Other Essays | | Finalist |
| 1966 | Edgar Z. Friedenberg | Coming of Age in America | | Finalist |
| 1966 | Bentley Glass | Science and Ethical Values | | Finalist |
| 1966 | Alice Kimball Smith | A Peril and a Hope: The Scientists' Movement in America, 1945–47 | | Finalist |
| 1967 | Oscar Lewis | La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty—San Juan and New York | Culture of poverty, Social theory asserting that value systems perpetuate poverty | Winner |
| 1967 | Howard B. Adelmann | Marcello Malpighi and the Evolution of Embryology | Marcello Malpighi, Italian biologist and physician | Finalist |
| 1967 | George Beadle and Muriel Beadle, | The Language of Life: An Introduction to the Science of Genetics | | Finalist |
| 1967 | Wassily W. Leontief | Essays in Economics | | Finalist |
| 1967 | Philip Rieff | The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud | | Finalist |
| 1967 | Erwin Straus | Phenomenological Psychology: The Selected Papers of Erwin W. Straus | Phenomenological Psychology, Psychological study of subjective experience | Finalist |
| 1968 | Jonathan Kozol | Death at an Early Age | | Winner |
| 1968 | Theodosius Dobzhansky | The Biology of Ultimate Concern | | Finalist |
| 1968 | John Kenneth Galbraith | The New Industrial State | | Finalist |
| 1968 | Suzanne K. Langer | Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling | | Finalist |
| 1968 | Lewis Mumford | The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development | | Finalist |
| 1969 | Robert Jay Lifton | Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima | | Winner |
| 1969 | René Dubos | So Human an Animal: How We Are Shaped by Surroundings and Events | | Finalist |
| 1969 | Frank E. Manuel | A Portrait of Isaac Newton | Isaac Newton, English physicist and mathematician (1642–1727) | Finalist |
| 1969 | Karl Menninger, M.D. | The Crime of Punishment | | Finalist |
| 1969 | James D. Watson | The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA | | Finalist |

### 1970s

Throughout the 1970s, the National Book Award was separated into multiple categories.

#### Arts and Letters

National Book Award for Nonfiction: Arts and Letters, winners and finalists, 1970–1976 :
| Year | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 1970 | Lillian Hellman | An Unfinished Woman: A Memoir | Lillian Hellman, American dramatist and screenwriter (1905–1984) | Winner |
| 1970 | Richard Howard | Alone with America: Essays on the Art of Poetry in the United States Since 1950 | | Finalist |
| 1970 | Noel Perrin | Dr. Bowdler's Legacy: A History of Expurgated Books in England and America | Expurgated books | Finalist |
| 1970 | John Unterecker | Voyager: A Life of Hart Crane | Hart Crane, American poet | Finalist |
| 1970 | Gore Vidal | Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship | | Finalist |
| 1971 | Francis Steegmuller | Cocteau: A Biography | Jean Cocteau, French writer and filmmaker | Winner |
| 1971 | Harold Bloom | Yeats | W. B. Yeats, Irish poet and playwright (1865–1939) | Finalist |
| 1971 | Robert Coles | Erik H. Erikson: the Growth of His Work | Erik Erikson, American German-born psychoanalyst & essayist | Finalist |
| 1971 | Nancy Milford | Zelda | Zelda Fitzgerald, American novelist (1900–1948) | Finalist |
| 1971 | Lewis Mumford | The Myth of the Machine: The Pentagon of Power | | Finalist |
| 1971 | Kenneth Rexroth | The Alternative Society: Essays from the Other World | | Finalist |
| 1972 | Charles Rosen | The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven | | Winner |
| 1972 | M. H. Abrams | Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature | | Finalist |
| 1972 | James Dickey | Sorties | | Finalist |
| 1972 | Thomas R. Edwards | Imagination and Power: A Study of Poetry on Public Themes | | Finalist |
| 1972 | Norman Fruman | Coleridge, the Damaged Archangel | Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet, literary critic and philosopher (1772–1834) | Finalist |
| 1972 | César Graña | Fact and Symbol: Essays in the Sociology of Art and Literature | | Finalist |
| 1972 | B. H. Haggin | Ballet Chronicle | | Finalist |
| 1972 | Nathan Huggins | Harlem Renaissance | Harlem Renaissance, African-American cultural movement in New York City in the 1920s | Finalist |
| 1972 | Iris Origo | Images and Shadows | Iris Origo, British writer, 1902–1988 | Finalist |
| 1972 | John Simon | Movies into Films: Film Criticism, 1967–1970 | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Arthur M. Wilson | Diderot | Denis Diderot, French Enlightenment philosopher, writer and encyclopædist (1713–1784) | Winner |
| 1973 | Leo Braudy | Jean Renoir: The World of His Films | Jean Renoir, French film director and screenwriter (1894–1979) | Finalist |
| 1973 | Arlene Croce | The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book | Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers's musicals | Finalist |
| 1973 | Stanley Fish | Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Michael Goldman | Shakespeare and the Energies of Drama | William Shakespeare, English poet, playwright, and actor (1564–1616) | Finalist |
| 1973 | Daniel Hoffman | Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe | Edgar Allan Poe, American writer and literary critic (1809–1849) | Finalist |
| 1973 | Albert Murray | South to a Very Old Place | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Linda Nochlin | Realism | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Harold Rosenberg | The De-Definition of Art: Action Art to Pop to Earthworks | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Leo Steinberg | Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Lionel Trilling | Sincerity and Authenticity | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Alec Wilder | American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950 | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Vernon Young | On Film: Unpopular Essays on a Popular Art | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Pauline Kael | Deeper into Movies | | Winner |
| 1974 | Daniel Aaron | The Unwritten War: American Writers and the Civil War | | Finalist |
| 1974 | W. H. Auden | Forewords and Afterwords | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Clarence Brown [ru] | Mandelstam | Osip Mandelstam | Finalist |
| 1974 | Richard Ellmann | Golden Codgers: Biographical Speculations | | Finalist |
| 1974 | B. H. Haggin | A Decade of Music | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Lillian Hellman | Pentimento: A Book of Portraits | Lillian Hellman | Finalist |
| 1974 | Edward Hoagland | Walking the Dead Diamond River | Dead Diamond River | Finalist |
| 1974 | Lincoln Kirstein | Elie Nadelman | Elie Nadelman | Finalist |
| 1974 | Leonard B. Meyer | Explaining Music: Essays and Explorations | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Saul Steinberg | The Inspector | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Kevin Starr | Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915 | | Finalist |
| 1975 | Roger Shattuck | Marcel Proust | Marcel Proust | Winner |
| 1975 | Lewis Thomas | The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher | | Winner |
| 1975 | Calvin Bedient | Eight Contemporary Poets: Charles Tomlinson, Donald Davie, R. S. Thomas, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, Thomas Kinsella, Stevie Smith, W. S. Graham | | Finalist |
| 1975 | Alessandra Comini | Egon Schiele's Portraits | Egon Schiele | Finalist |
| 1975 | Peter Gay | Style in History | | Finalist |
| 1975 | Richard Gilman | The Making of Modern Drama: A Study of Büchner, Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Pirandello, Brecht, Beckett, Handke | | Finalist |
| 1975 | Elizabeth Hardwick | Seduction and Betrayal | | Finalist |
| 1975 | Marjorie L. Hoover | Meyerhold: The Art of Conscious Theater | Vsevolod Meyerhold | Finalist |
| 1975 | H. W. Janson | 16 Studies | Art History | Finalist |
| 1975 | Eleanor Perényi | Liszt: The Artist as Romantic Hero | Franz Liszt | Finalist |
| 1975 | Oliver Strunk | Essays on Music in the Western World | | Finalist |
| 1976 | Paul Fussell | The Great War and Modern Memory | | Winner |
| 1976 | Lincoln Kirstein | Njinsky Dancing | Vaslav Nijinsky | Finalist |
| 1976 | Lawrence L. Langer | The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination | | Finalist |
| 1976 | Robert Rosenblum | Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko | Romanticism painting | Finalist |
| 1976 | Patricia Meyer Spacks | The Female Imagination | | Finalist |
| 1976 | Leo Steinberg | Michelangelo's Last Paintings | Michelangelo | Finalist |

#### History, biography, and Autobiography

In some years, the History and Biography awards were combined, while in others, they were two separate categories.
National Book Award for Nonfiction: History and Biography, winners and finalists, 1970–1979 :
| Year | Category | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 1970 | History and biography | T. Harry William | Huey Long | Huey Long, American politician from Louisiana (1893–1935) | Winner |
| 1970 | History and biography | Dean Acheson | Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department | Dean Acheson, American politician and lawyer (1893–1971) | Finalist |
| 1970 | History and biography | Townsend Hoopes | The Limits of Intervention | Townsend Hoopes, American historian and government official (1922–2004) | Finalist |
| 1970 | History and biography | John Womack | Zapata and the Mexican Revolution | Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary (1879–1919) | Finalist |
| 1970 | History and biography | Gordon S. Wood | The Creation of the American Republic | | Finalist |
| 1971 | History and biography | James MacGregor Burns | Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom | Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States from 1933 to 1945 | Winner |
| 1971 | History and biography | David Herbert Donald | Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man | Charles Sumner, American abolitionist and statesman (1811–1874) | Finalist |
| 1971 | History and biography | Andy Logan | Against the Evidence: The Becker-Rosenthal Affair | Rosenthal murder case, Murder of Herman Rosenthal and subsequent trial | Finalist |
| 1971 | History and biography | Dumas Malone | Jefferson the President: First Term, 1801–1805 | Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States from 1801 to 1809 | Finalist |
| 1971 | History and biography | C. L. Sulzberger | The Last of the Giants | | Finalist |
| 1972 | Biography | Joseph P. Lash | Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship, Based on Eleanor Roosevelt's Private Papers | Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States (1933–1945), diplomat, and activist | Winner |
| 1972 | Biography | John Cody | After Great Pain: The Inner Life of Emily Dickinson | Emily Dickinson, American poet (1830–1886) | Finalist |
| 1972 | Biography | Emily Farnham | Charles Demuth: Behind A Laughing Mask | Charles Demuth, American painter | Finalist |
| 1972 | Biography | David Freeman Hawke | Benjamin Rush: Revolutionary Gadfly | Benjamin Rush, American Founding Father physician, educator, and author (1746–1813) | Finalist |
| 1972 | Biography | Ralph Ketcham | James Madison: A Biography | James Madison, President of the United States from 1809 to 1817 | Finalist |
| 1972 | Biography | Harding Lemay | Inside, Looking Out: A Personal Memoir | Harding Lemay, American screenwriter | Finalist |
| 1972 | Biography | D'Arcy McNickle | Indian Man: A Life of Oliver La Farge | Oliver La Farge, American novelist | Finalist |
| 1972 | Biography | Ronald Paulson | Hogarth: His Life, Art, and Times | William Hogarth, English artist and social critic (1697–1764) | Finalist |
| 1972 | Biography | Lacey Baldwin Smith | Henry VIII: The Mask of Royalty | Henry VIII, King of England from 1509 to 1547 | Finalist |
| 1972 | Biography | Barbara Tuchman | Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 | | Finalist |
| 1972 | History | Allan Nevins | The Organized War, 1863–1864 and The Organized War to Victory, 1864–1865 | | Winner |
| 1973 | Biography | James Thomas Flexner | George Washington: Anguish and Farewell, 1793–1799 | George Washington, First president of the United States | Winner |
| 1973 | Biography | Ingrid Bengis | Combat in the Erogenous Zone: Writings on Love, Hate, and Sex | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Biography | Hortense Calisher | Herself | Hortense Calisher, American novelist | Finalist |
| 1973 | Biography | Kenneth S. Davis | FDR: The Beckoning of Destiny, 1882–1928 | Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States from 1933 to 1945 | Finalist |
| 1973 | Biography | Leon Edel | Henry James: The Master, 1901–1916 | Henry James, American-born British writer and literary critic | Finalist |
| 1973 | Biography | Eleanor Flexner | Mary Wollstonecraft: A Biography | Mary Wollstonecraft, English writer and intellectual (1759–1797) | Finalist |
| 1973 | Biography | Nikki Giovanni | Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being A Black Poet | Nikki Giovanni, American poet, writer and activist | Finalist |
| 1973 | Biography | John Houseman | Run-Through | John Houseman, British-American actor and film producer (1902–1988) | Finalist |
| 1973 | Biography | Diane Johnson | Lesser Lives | Mary Ellen Meredith, British novelist and poet of the Victorian era | Finalist |
| 1973 | Biography | George F. Kennan | Memoirs, 1950–1963 | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Biography | Joseph P. Lash | Eleanor: The Years Alone | Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States (1933–1945), diplomat, and activist | Finalist |
| 1973 | Biography | Margaret Mead | Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Biography | Peter Štanský and William Abrahams | The Unknown Orwell | George Orwell, English author and journalist (1903–1950) | Finalist |
| 1973 | History | Robert Manson Myers | The Children of Pride: A True Story of Georgia and the Civil War | Charles Colcock Jones, American Presbyterian clergyman, educator, and planter (1804–1863) | Winner |
| 1973 | History | Isaiah Trunk | Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation | | Winner |
| 1973 | History | James David Barber | The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House | | Finalist |
| 1973 | History | John Diggins | Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America | | Finalist |
| 1973 | History | Richard Dunn | Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 | | Finalist |
| 1973 | History | Loren Graham | Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union | | Finalist |
| 1973 | History | David Lovejoy | The Glorious Revolution in America | Dominion of New England, English regional government in North America, 1686–1689 | Finalist |
| 1973 | History | Jerre Mangione | The Dream and the Deal: The Federal Writers Project, 1935–43 | | Finalist |
| 1973 | History | Robert O. Paxton | Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944 | | Finalist |
| 1973 | History | Edward E. Rice | Mao's Way | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Biography | John Leonard Clive | Thomas Babington Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian | Thomas Babington Macaulay | Winner |
| 1974 | Biography | Douglas Day | Malcolm Lowry: A Biography | Malcolm Lowry | Finalist |
| 1974 | Biography | J. H. Adamson and H. F. Folland | Sir Harry Vane: His Life and Times (1613–1662) | Henry Vane the Younger | Finalist |
| 1974 | Biography | Robert V. Bruce | Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and The Conquest of Solitude | Alexander Graham Bell | Finalist |
| 1974 | Biography | Stephen F. Cohen | Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888–1938 | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Biography | Lester G. Crocker | Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Prophetic Voice, Vol. II | Jean-Jacques Rousseau | Finalist |
| 1974 | Biography | Myra Friedman | Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin | Janis Joplin | Finalist |
| 1974 | Biography | William H. Harbaugh | Lawyer's Lawyer: The Life of John W. Davis | John W. Davis | Finalist |
| 1974 | Biography | Townsend Hoopes | The Devil and John Foster Dulles | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Biography | Louis Sheaffer | O'Neill Volume II: Son and Artist | Eugene O'Neill | Finalist |
| 1974 | Biography | Kathryn Kish Sklar | Catherine Beecher | Catherine Beecher | Finalist |
| 1974 | Biography | Adam Ulam | Stalin | Joseph Stalin | Finalist |
| 1974 | History | John Leonard Clive | Thomas Babington Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian | Thomas Babington Macaulay | Winner |
| 1974 | History | Ray Allen Billington | Frederick Jackson Turner: Historian, Teacher, Scholar | Frederick Jackson Turner | Finalist |
| 1974 | History | Daniel J. Boorstin | The Americans | | Finalist |
| 1974 | History | Frank Freidel | Franklin D. Roosevelt | Franklin D. Roosevelt | Finalist |
| 1974 | History | Lawrence M. Friedman | A History of American Law | | Finalist |
| 1974 | History | Frederic C. Lane | Venice: Maritime Republic | | Finalist |
| 1974 | History | Edward Pessen | Riches, Class and Power Before the Civil War | | Finalist |
| 1974 | History | Richard Slotkin | Regeneration Through Violence: the Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 | | Finalist |
| 1974 | History | Stephan Thernstrom | The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880–1970 | | Finalist |
| 1974 | History | Robert C. Tucker | Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929: A Study in History and Personality | | Finalist |
| 1975 | Biography | Richard B. Sewall | The Life of Emily Dickinson | Emily Dickinson | Winner |
| 1975 | Biography | Richard Beeman | Patrick Henry: A Biography | Patrick Henry | Finalist |
| 1975 | Biography | Michael Collins | Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys | | Finalist |
| 1975 | Biography | Ben Maddow | Edward Weston: Fifty Years; The Definitive Volume of His Photographic Work | Edward Weston | Finalist |
| 1975 | Biography | James R. Mellow | Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company | Gertrude Stein | Finalist |
| 1975 | Biography | Francis Steegmuller | "Your Isadora": The Love Story of Isadora Duncan & Gordon Craig | Isadora Duncan and Gordon Craig | Finalist |
| 1975 | Biography | Wallace Stegner | The Uneasy Chair: A Biography of Bernard DeVoto | Bernard DeVoto | Finalist |
| 1975 | Biography | Richard M. Sudhalter and Philip R. Evans | Bix: Man and Legend | Bix Beiderbecke | Finalist |
| 1975 | Biography | Glenn Watkins | Gesualdo: The Man and His Music | Carlo Gesualdo | Finalist |
| 1975 | Biography | James A. Weisheipl | Friar Thomas D'Aquino: his life, thought, and work | Thomas Aquinas | Finalist |
| 1975 | History | Bernard Bailyn | The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson | | Winner |
| 1975 | History | Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum | Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft | | Finalist |
| 1975 | History | Robert Brentano | Rome Before Avignon | | Finalist |
| 1975 | History | Shelby Foote | The Civil War: A Narrative | | Finalist |
| 1975 | History | Eugene D. Genovese | Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made | | Finalist |
| 1975 | History | John R. Gillis | Youth and History: Tradition and Change in European Age Relations, 1750–Present | | Finalist |
| 1975 | History | Erich S. Gruen | The Last Generation of the Roman Republic | | Finalist |
| 1975 | History | Christopher H. Johnson | Utopian Communism in France | | Finalist |
| 1975 | History | Gerald H. Meaker | The Revolutionary Left in Spain | | Finalist |
| 1975 | History | Edward Shorter and Charles Tilly | Strikes in France, 1830–1968 | | Finalist |
| 1975 | History | Mira Wilkins | The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise | | Finalist |
| 1975 | History | Peter H. Wood | Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion | | Finalist |
| 1976 | History and Biography | David Brion Davis | The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 | | Winner |
| 1976 | History and Biography | Paul Horgan | Lamy of Santa Fe | Jean Baptiste Lamy | Finalist |
| 1976 | History and Biography | R. W. B. Lewis | Edith Wharton | Edith Wharton | Finalist |
| 1976 | History and Biography | Charles S. Maier | Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany and Italy in the Decade after World War | | Finalist |
| 1976 | History and Biography | Edmund S. Morgan | American Slavery, American Freedom | | Finalist |
| 1976 | History and Biography | Richard Pipes | Russia Under the Old Regime | | Finalist |
| 1976 | History and Biography | Frank R. Rossiter | Charles Ives and His America | Charles Ives | Finalist |
| 1976 | History and Biography | Martin J. Sherwin | A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and its Legacies | | Finalist |
| 1977 | Biography and Autobiography | W. A. Swanberg | Norman Thomas: The Last Idealist | Norman Thomas | Winner |
| 1977 | Biography and Autobiography | Peter Collier and David Horowitz | The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty | | Finalist |
| 1977 | Biography and Autobiography | Anaïs Nin | The Diary of Anaïs Nin: Volume VI 1955–1966 | Anaïs Nin | Finalist |
| 1977 | Biography and Autobiography | B. L. Reid | The Lives of Roger Casement | Roger Casement | Finalist |
| 1977 | Biography and Autobiography | E. B. White | Letters of E. B. White | E. B. White | Finalist |
| 1977 | History | Irving Howe | World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made | | Winner |
| 1977 | History | Lawrence Goodwyn | Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America | | Finalist |
| 1977 | History | Linda Gordon | Woman's Body, Woman's Right: The History of Birth Control in America | | Finalist |
| 1977 | History | Richard Kluger | Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality | | Finalist |
| 1977 | History | Joshua C. Taylor | America as Art | | Finalist |
| 1978 | Biography and Autobiography | W. Jackson Bate | Samuel Johnson | Samuel Johnson | Winner |
| 1978 | Biography and Autobiography | James Atlas | Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet | | Finalist |
| 1978 | Biography and Autobiography | Will D. Campbell | Brother to a Dragonfly | | Finalist |
| 1978 | Biography and Autobiography | Will Durant and Ariel Durant | A Dual Autobiography | | Finalist |
| 1978 | Biography and Autobiography | Frank Vandiver | Black Jack: The Life and Times of John J. Pershing | | Finalist |
| 1978 | History | David McCullough | The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870–1914 | | Winner |
| 1978 | History | Henry Steele Commager | The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized | Age of Enlightenment | Finalist |
| 1978 | History | Robert J. Donovan | Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945–48 | Harry S. Truman | Finalist |
| 1978 | History | Joseph Kastner | A Species of Eternity | Natural history in the New World | Finalist |
| 1978 | History | Fritz Stern | Gold and Iron | Gerson Bleichröder and Otto von Bismarck | Finalist |
| 1979 | Biography and Autobiography | Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. | Robert Kennedy and His Times | | Winner |
| 1979 | Biography and Autobiography | Donald Hall | Remembering Poets | | Finalist |
| 1979 | Biography and Autobiography | William Manchester | American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur | | Finalist |
| 1979 | Biography and Autobiography | William M. Murphy | Prodigal Father: The Life of John Butler Yeats | | Finalist |
| 1979 | Biography and Autobiography | Phyllis Rose | Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf | Virginia Woolf | Finalist |
| 1979 | History | Richard Beale Davis | Intellectual Life in the Colonial South, 1585–1763 | | Winner |
| 1979 | History | Reinhard Bendix | Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule | | Finalist |
| 1979 | History | Gordon A. Craig | Germany, 1866–1945 | | Finalist |
| 1979 | History | John H. White, Jr. | The American Railroad Passenger Car | | Finalist |
| 1979 | History | Garry Wills | Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence | | Finalist |

#### Philosophy and Religion

National Book Award for Nonfiction: Philosophy and Religion, winners and finalists, 1970– :
| Year | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 1970 | Erik Erikson | Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence | | Winner |
| 1970 | Kenneth E. Boulding | Beyond Economics: Essays on Society, Religion, and Ethics | | Finalist |
| 1970 | Loren Eiseley | The Unexpected Universe | | Finalist |
| 1970 | Rollo May | Love and Will | | Finalist |
| 1970 | Theodore Roszak | The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition | | Finalist |
| 1971 | No award presented | No award presented | No award presented | No award presented |
| 1972 | Martin E. Marty | Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America | | Winner |
| 1973 | S. E. Ahlstrom | A Religious History of the American People | | Winner |
| 1973 | Silvano Arieti, M.D. | The Will to be Human | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Germaine Brée | Camus and Sartre | Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre | Finalist |
| 1973 | Arthur Danto | Mysticism and Morality: Oriental Thought and Moral Philosophy | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Stanley Cavell | The Senses of Walden | Walden | Finalist |
| 1973 | William A. Christian | Person and God in a Spanish Valley | | Finalist |
| 1973 | William Leiss | The Domination of Nature | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Theodore Roszak | Where the Wasteland Ends | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Morton White | Science and Sentiment in America | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Theodore Ziolkowski | Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Maurice Natanson | Edmund Husserl: Philosopher of Infinite Tasks | Edmund Husserl | Winner |
| 1974 | Don Browning | Generative Man: Psychoanalytic Perspectives | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Harvey Cox | The Seduction of the Spirit: The Use and Misuse of People's Religion | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Erich Fromm | The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Marjorie Grene | Jean-Paul Sartre | Jean-Paul Sartre | Finalist |
| 1974 | Trent Schroyer | The Critique of Domination: The Origins and Development of Critical Theory | Critical theory | Finalist |
| 1974 | Laurence Veysey | The Communal Experience: Anarchist and Mystical Counter-Cultures in America | American communes | Finalist |
| 1974 | Frederic Wakeman | History and Will: Philosophical Perspectives of Mao Tse-Tung's Thought | Maoism | Finalist |
| 1974 | Harry Austryn Wolfson | Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, Vol. 1 | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Larzer Ziff | Puritanism in America: New Culture in a New World | New England Puritan | Finalist |
| 1975 | Robert Nozick | Anarchy, State, and Utopia | | Winner |
| 1975 | Ian Barbour | Myths, Models and Paradigms | | Finalist |
| 1975 | Leonard E. Barrett | Soul-Force: African Heritage in Afro-American Religion | Afro-American religion | Finalist |
| 1975 | John Murray Cuddihy | The Ordeal of Civility: Freud, Marx, Lévi-Strauss and the Jewish Struggle with Modernity | Modernization of European Jews or shtetl people | Finalist |
| 1975 | Philip Garvin and Julia Welch | Religious America | | Finalist |
| 1975 | Guenter Lewy | Religion and Revolution | | Finalist |
| 1975 | Barbara Myerhoff | Peyote Hunt: The Sacred Journey of the Huichol Indians | Huichol use of peyote | Finalist |
| 1975 | Jaroslav Pelikan | The Spirit of Eastern Christendom 600–1700 | Eastern Christianity | Finalist |
| 1975 | Rosemary Radford Ruether | Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism | Anti-Semitism | Finalist |

#### The Sciences

National Book Award for Nonfiction: The Sciences, winners and finalists, 1971– :
| Year | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 1971 | Raymond Phineas Stearns | Science in the British Colonies of America | | Winner |
| 1971 | Gustav Eckstein | The Body Has a Head | | Finalist |
| 1971 | Victor C. Ferkiss | Technological Man | | Finalist |
| 1971 | Ian L. McHarg | Design with Nature | Ecological land-use planning | Finalist |
| 1971 | Theodor Rosebury | Life on Man | Human skin as an ecosystem | Finalist |
| 1972 | George L. Small | The Blue Whale | | Winner |
| 1973 | George B. Schaller | The Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator-Prey Relations | | Winner |
| 1973 | John E. Bardach, John H. Ryther and William O. McLarney | Aquaculture: the farming and husbandry of freshwater and marine organisms | Aquaculture, Farming of aquatic organisms | Finalist |
| 1973 | Herman H. Goldstine | The Computer from Pascal to Von Neumann | History of computing and history of computing hardware | Finalist |
| 1973 | Garrett Hardin | Exploring New Ethics for Survival: The Voyage of the Spaceship Beagle | Lifeboat ethics and bioethics | Finalist |
| 1973 | Morris Kline | Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Peter Matthiessen | The Tree Where Man Was Born | East Africa | Finalist |
| 1973 | H. Lewis McKinney | Wallace and Natural Selection | Alfred Russel Wallace, British naturalist (1823–1913) | Finalist |
| 1973 | Victor Richards, M.D., | Cancer: The Wayward Cell; its origins, nature, and treatment | Cancer | Finalist |
| 1973 | Ann Zwinger and Beatrice Willard | Land Above the Trees: A Guide to American Alpine Tundra | Alpine tundra | Finalist |
| 1974 | S. E. Luria | Life: The Unfinished Experiment | | Winner |
| 1974 | Jeremy Bernstein | Einstein | Albert Einstein, German-born physicist (1879–1955) | Finalist |
| 1974 | Theodosius Dobzhansky | Genetic Diversity and Human Equality | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Amitai Etzioni | Genetic Fix: The Next Technological Revolution | | Finalist |
| 1974 | J. M. Jauch | Are Quanta Real?: A Galilean Dialogue | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Ruth Kirk and Louis Kirk | Desert: The American Southwest | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Suzanne K. Langer | Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling, Vol. II | | Finalist |
| 1974 | George Laycock | Autumn of the Eagle | Bald eagles | Finalist |
| 1974 | Robert I. Levy | Tahitians: Mind and Experience in the Society Islands | | Finalist |
| 1974 | William T. Powers | Behavior: The Control of Perception | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Edwin S. Shneidman | Deaths of Man | | Finalist |
| 1975 | Silvano Arieti | Interpretation of Schizophrenia | | Winner |
| 1975 | Lewis Thomas | The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher | | Winner |
| 1975 | Lewis Feuer | Einstein and the Generation of Science | | Finalist |
| 1975 | Howard E. Gruber and Paul H. Barrett | Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity | | Finalist |
| 1975 | J. L. Heilbron | H. G. J. Moseley: The Life and Letters of an English Physicist, 1887–1915 | Henry Moseley, English physicist | Finalist |
| 1975 | Richard S. Lewis | The Voyages of Apollo: The Exploration of the Moon | Apollo program | Finalist |
| 1975 | John McPhee | The Curve of Binding Energy | | Finalist |
| 1975 | Stanley Milgram | Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View | | Finalist |
| 1975 | Walter S. Sullivan | Continents in Motion: The New Earth Debate | Plate tectonics | Finalist |
| 1975 | Dorothy B. Vitaliano | Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origins | Geomythology | Finalist |

#### Contemporary Affairs

National Book Award for Nonfiction: Contemporary Affairs, winners and finalists, 1972– :
| Year | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 1972 | Stewart Brand (editor) | The Last Whole Earth Catalogue | | Winner |
| 1973 | Frances FitzGerald | Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam | Vietnam War, Cold War conflict in Southeast Asia from 1955 to 1975 | Finalist |
| 1973 | Michael Barone, Grant Ujifusa and Douglas Matthews | The Almanac of American Politics | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Herbert Block | Herblock's State of the Union | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Lynn Eden | Crisis in Watertown: The Polarization of an American Community | Watertown, Wisconsin (1967–1969) | Finalist |
| 1973 | David Halberstam | The Best and the Brightest | Vietnam War, Cold War conflict in Southeast Asia from 1955 to 1975 | Finalist |
| 1973 | Seymour Hersh | Cover-Up: The Army's Secret Investigation of the Massacre at My Lai 4 | My Lai Massacre cover-up | Finalist |
| 1973 | Stanley Karnow | Mao and China: From Revolution to Revolution | Mao Zedong (founder of the People's Republic of Chinaa) nd China | Finalist |
| 1973 | Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb | The Hidden Injuries of Class | Working-class consciousness | Finalist |
| 1973 | Colin M. Turnbull | The Mountain People | Ik people | Finalist |
| 1973 | Garry Wills | Bare Ruined Choirs: Doubt, Prophecy, and Radical Religion | | Finalist |
| 1973 | Garry Wills | Attica: The Official Report of the New York State Special Commission on Attica | Attica Prison riot | Finalist |
| 1974 | Murray Kempton | The Briar Patch: The People of the State of New York versus Lumumba Shakur, et al. | A Black Panthers's trial | Winner |
| 1974 | Peter Davies | The Truth About Kent State: A Challenge to the American Conscience | Kent State shootings | Finalist |
| 1974 | John Kenneth Galbraith | Economics and the Public Purpose | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Vivian Gornick | In Search of Ali Mahmoud: An American Woman in Egypt | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Walter Karp | Indispensable Enemies: The Politics of Misrule in America | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Robert Jay Lifton | Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans—Neither Victims nor Executioners | US Vietnam veterans | Finalist |
| 1974 | Jessica Mitford | Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business | | Finalist |
| 1974 | Nora Sayre | Sixties Going on Seventies (Perspectives on the Sixties) | 1960s | Finalist |
| 1974 | Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. | The Imperial Presidency | Presidential power in the United States | Finalist |
| 1974 | Robert Sherrill | The Saturday Night Special and Other Guns | Personal firearms | Finalist |
| 1975 | Theodore Rosengarten | All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw | Ned Cobb | Winner |
| 1975 | Raoul Berger | Executive Privilege: A Constitutional Myth | U.S. executive privilege | Finalist |
| 1975 | Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward | All the President's Men | Watergate scandal | Finalist |
| 1975 | Robert Jean Campbell, M.D. | The Chasm: The Life and Death of a Great Experiment in Ghetto Education | | Finalist |
| 1975 | Robert Caro, | The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York | Robert Moses | Finalist |
| 1975 | Joe Eszterhas | Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse | Harrisonville shooting | Finalist |
| 1975 | Middleton A. Harris with others (uncredited editor Toni Morrison) | The Black Book | "Printed scrapbook" of American "Negro historical materials" | Finalist |
| 1975 | Andrew Levinson | The Working Class Majority | | Finalist |
| 1975 | Robert M. Pirsig | Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values | | Finalist |
| 1975 | Franz Schurmann | The Logic of World Power: An Inquiry into the Origins, Currents, and Contradictions of World Politics | | Finalist |
| 1975 | Rachel Scott | Muscle and Blood | | Finalist |
| 1975 | Studs Terkel | Working | | Finalist |
| 1976 | Michael J. Arlen | Passage to Ararat | | Winner |
| 1976 | Richard Barnet and Ronald E. Muller | Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations | Multinational corporations | Finalist |
| 1976 | Peter L. Berger | Pyramids of Sacrifice: Political Ethics and Social Change | | Finalist |
| 1976 | John Kenneth Galbraith | Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went | Money | Finalist |
| 1976 | W. Eugene Smith and Aileen M. Smith | Minamata | Minamata disease | Finalist |
| 1976 | Tim Wicker | A Time to Die | | Finalist |
| 1977 | Bruno Bettelheim | The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales | | Winner |
| 1977 | Dorothy Dinnerstein | The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise | | Finalist |
| 1977 | Joseph Frank | Dostoyevsky: A Writer in His Time | Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian novelist (1821–1881) | Finalist |
| 1977 | Ada Louise Huxtable | Kicked a Building Lately? | | Finalist |
| 1977 | Rufus E. Miles, Jr. | Awakening from the American Dream | | Finalist |
| 1978 | Gloria Emerson | Winners and Losers | | Winner |
| 1978 | Kai T. Erikson | Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood | Buffalo Creek flood, 1972 dam failure in West Virginia | Finalist |
| 1978 | Michael Harrington | The Vast Majority | | Finalist |
| 1978 | Louise Kapp Howe | Pink Collar Workers | Pink-collar workers, people working in the care-oriented careers | Finalist |
| 1978 | Julian Jaynes | The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind | | Finalist |
| 1979 | Peter Matthiessen | The Snow Leopard | | Winner |
| 1979 | Kenneth E. Boulding | Stable Peace | Peace science | Finalist |
| 1979 | Ivan Doig | This House of Sky: Landscapes of the Western Wind | | Finalist |
| 1979 | Alfred Kazin | New York Jew | | Finalist |
| 1979 | Meyer Schapiro | Modern Art: 19th and 20th Centuries | | Finalist |

### 1980s
#### 1980–1983

From 1980 to 1983 there were dual awards for hardcover (hc) and paperback (ppb) books in all nonfiction subcategories and some others. Most of the paperback award winners were second and later editions that had been previously eligible in their first editions. Here the first edition publication year is given parenthetically except the calendar year preceding the award is represented by "(new)".
In 1980, the "Nonfiction" category included the following genres, each in both paperback and hardcover.

##### Autobiography and Biography

| Year | Category | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 1980 | Autobiography Hardcover | Lauren Bacall | Lauren Bacall by Myself | | Winner |
| 1980 | Autobiography Hardcover | Barbara Gordon | I'm Dancing As Fast As I Can | Valium addiction | Finalist |
| 1980 | Autobiography Hardcover | John Houseman | Front and Center | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Autobiography Hardcover | William Saroyan | Obituaries | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Autobiography Paperback | Malcolm Cowley | And I Worked at the Writer's Trade: Chapters of Literary History 1918–1978 | | Winner |
| 1980 | Biography Hardcover | Edmund Morris | The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt | Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States from 1901 to 1909 | Winner |
| 1980 | Biography Hardcover | Millicent Bell | Marquand: An American Life | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Biography Hardcover | Leon Edel | Bloomsbury: A House of Lions | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Biography Hardcover | Ernest Samuels | Bernard Berenson: The Making of a Connoisseurk | Bernard Berenson, American art critic (1865–1959) | Finalist |
| 1980 | Biography Paperback | A. Scott Berg | Max Perkins: Editor of Genius | Maxwell Perkins, Book editor | Winner |
| 1980 | Biography Paperback | W. Jackson Bate | Samuel Johnson | Samuel Johnson, English writer and lexicographer (1709–1784) | Finalist |
| 1980 | Biography Paperback | William Manchester | American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964 | Douglas MacArthur, American military leader (1880–1964) | Finalist |
| 1980 | Biography Paperback | Arthur Schlesinger | Robert Kennedy and His Times | | Finalist |
| 1981 | Hardcover | Justin Kaplan | Walt Whitman: A Life | Walt Whitman, American poet, essayist and journalist (1819–1892) | Winner |
| 1981 | Hardcover | Robert K. Massie | Peter the Great: His Life and World | | Finalist |
| 1981 | Hardcover | James R. Mellow | Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times | Nathaniel Hawthorne, American author (1804–1864) | Finalist |
| 1981 | Hardcover | Peter Štanský and William Abrahams | Orwell: The Transformation | George Orwell, English author and journalist (1903–1950) | Finalist |
| 1981 | Paperback | Deirdre Bair | Samuel Beckett: A Biography | Samuel Beckett, Irish writer (1906–1989) | Winner |
| 1981 | Paperback | E. K. Brown | Willa Cather: A Critical Biography | Willa Cather, American writer (1873–1947) | Finalist |
| 1981 | Paperback | Leon Edel | Bloomsbury: A House of Lions | | Finalist |
| 1981 | Paperback | Maureen Howard | Facts of Life | | Finalist |
| 1981 | Paperback | Meryle Secrest | Being Bernard Berenson | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Hardcover | David McCullough | Mornings on Horseback | Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States from 1901 to 1909 | Winner |
| 1982 | Hardcover | Gay Wilson Allen | Waldo Emerson: A Biography | Ralph Waldo Emerson, American philosopher (1803–1882) | Finalist |
| 1982 | Hardcover | Dumas Malone | Jefferson and His Time: The Sage of Monticello | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Hardcover | William S. McFeely | Grant: A Biography | Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War general and 18th president of the United States | Finalist |
| 1982 | Hardcover | Milton Rugoff | The Beechers | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Paperback | Ronald Steel | Walter Lippmann and the American Century | Walter Lippmann, American journalist | Winner |
| 1982 | Paperback | Joseph P. Lash | Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Paperback | Robert K. Massie | Peter the Great: His Life and World | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Paperback | Ted Morgan | Maugham | W. Somerset Maugham, English playwright and author (1874–1965) | Finalist |
| 1982 | Paperback | Ernest Samuels | Bernard Berenson: The Making of a Connoisseur | Bernard Berenson, American art critic (1865–1959) | Finalist |
| 1983 | Hardcover | Judith Thurman | Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller | | Winner |
| 1983 | Hardcover | Russell Baker | Growing Up | | Finalist |
| 1983 | Hardcover | Robert A. Caro | The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power | | Finalist |
| 1983 | Hardcover | Robert J. Donovan | Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1949–1953 | | Finalist |
| 1983 | Hardcover | Lewis Mumford | Sketches from Life: The Autobiography of Lewis Mumford: The Early Years | | Finalist |
| 1983 | Paperback | James R. Mellow | Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times | Nathaniel Hawthorne, American author (1804–1864) | Winner |
| 1983 | Paperback | Dumas Malone | Jefferson and His Time: The Sage of Monticello | | Finalist |
| 1983 | Paperback | Paul Mariani | William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked | William Carlos Williams, American poet (1883–1963) | Finalist |
| 1983 | Paperback | William S. McFeely | Grant: A Biography | Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War general and 18th president of the United States | Finalist |
| 1983 | Paperback | Jean Strouse | Alice James: A Biography | Alice James, American writer | Finalist |

##### Current Interest

| Year | Category | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Julia Child | Julia Child and More Company | Julia Child, American cooking personality (1912–2004) | Winner |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Raymond Lifchez and Barbara Winslow | Design for Independent Living: The Environment and Physically Disabled People | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Gay Gaer Luce | Your Second Life: Vitality and Growth in Middle and Later Years from the Experiences of the Sage Program | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Nathan Pritikin with Patrick M. McGrady | The Pritikin Program for Diet and Exercise | Pritikin diet, a low-fat, high-fibre diet | Finalist |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Robert Ellis Smith | Privacy: How to Protect What's Left of It | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Paperback | Christopher Lasch | The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations | | Winner |
| 1980 | Paperback | Frances Wells Burck | Babysense: A Practical and Supportive Guide to Baby Care | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Paperback | Farallones Institute | The Integral Urban House: Self-Reliant Living in the City | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Paperback | Tracy Hotchner | Pregnancy and Childbirth: The Complete Guide for a New Life | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Paperback | Calvin Trillin | Alice, Let's Eat: Further Adventures of a Happy Eater | | Finalist |

##### General nonfiction

| Year | Category | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Tom Wolfe | The Right Stuff | | Winner |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Frances FitzGerald | America Revised | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Hardcover | David Halberstam | The Powers That Be | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Frederic Morton | A Nervous Splendor: Vienna, 1888–1889 | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Thomas Powers | The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA | Richard Helms, U.S. Director of Central Intelligence (1966–1973) | Finalist |
| 1980 | Paperback | Peter Matthiessen | The Snow Leopard | | Winner |
| 1980 | Paperback | Sissela Bok | Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Paperback | Barry Lopez | Of Wolves and Men | | Finalist |
| 1981 | Hardcover | Maxine Hong Kingston | China Men | | Winner |
| 1981 | Hardcover | Malcolm Cowley | The Dream of the Golden Mountains: Remembering the 1930s | | Finalist |
| 1981 | Hardcover | John Graves | From a Limestone Ledge | | Finalist |
| 1981 | Hardcover | Victor S. Navasky | Naming Names | Hollywood blacklist | Finalist |
| 1981 | Hardcover | Studs Terkel | American Dreams: Lost and Found | | Finalist |
| 1981 | Paperback | Jane Kramer | The Last Cowboy: Europeans and The Politics of Memory | | Winner |
| 1981 | Paperback | Joan Didion | The White Album | | Finalist |
| 1981 | Paperback | David Halberstam | The Powers That Be | | Finalist |
| 1981 | Paperback | Dan Morgan | Merchants of Grain: The Power and Profits of the Five Giant Companies at the Center of the World's Food Supply | | Finalist |
| 1981 | Paperback | Paul Theroux | The Old Patagonian Express | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Hardcover | Tracy Kidder | The Soul of a New Machine | | Winner |
| 1982 | Hardcover | Guy Davenport | The Geography of the Imagination: Forty Essays | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Hardcover | James Fallows | National Defense | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Hardcover | Janet Malcolm | Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Hardcover | Andrea Lee | Russian Journal | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Paperback | Victor S. Navasky | Naming Names | Hollywood blacklist | Winner |
| 1982 | Paperback | Norman Cousins | Anatomy of an Illness As Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Paperback | Edward Hoagland | African Calliope: A Journey to the Sudan | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Paperback | Landon Jones | Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Paperback | Barbara Novak | Nature and Culture: American Landscape Painting, 1825–1875 | | Finalist |
| 1983 | Hardcover | Fox Butterfield | China: Alive in the Bitter Sea | | Winner |
| 1983 | Hardcover | George F. Kennan | The Nuclear Delusion: Soviet-American Relations in the Atomic Age | | Finalist |
| 1983 | Hardcover | David McClintock | Indecent Exposure: A True Story of Hollywood and Wall Street | Begelman affair | Finalist |
| 1983 | Hardcover | Jonathan Schell | The Fate of the Earth | | Finalist |
| 1983 | Hardcover | Susan Sheehan | Is There No Place on Earth for Me? | | Finalist |
| 1983 | Paperback | James Fallows | National Defense | | Winner |
| 1983 | Paperback | Edwin R. Bayley | Joe McCarthy and the Press | Joseph McCarthy, American anticommunist politician (1908–1957) | Finalist |
| 1983 | Paperback | Paul Fussell | Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between the Wars | | Finalist |
| 1983 | Paperback | Al Santoli | Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War | | Finalist |
| 1983 | Paperback | Joanna Stratton | Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier | | Finalist |

##### General reference

| Year | Category | Author | Title | Result |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Elder Witt (editor) | Congressional Quarterly's Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court | Winner |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Frederic M. Kaplan, Julian M. Sopin, and Stephen Andors (eds.) | Encyclopedia of China Today | Finalist |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Bernard Karpel | Arts in America: A Bibliography | Finalist |
| 1980 | Hardcover | J. Gordon Melton | Encyclopedia of American Religions | Finalist |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Carolyn Sue Peterson and Ann D. Fenton (eds.) | Index to Children's Songs | Finalist |
| 1980 | Paperback | Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh | The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows 1946–present | Winner |
| 1980 | Paperback | Cynthia W. Cooke, M.D., and Susan Dworkin | The Ms. Guide to a Woman's Health | Finalist |
| 1980 | Paperback | Solar Age magazine editors | The Solar Age Resource Book | Finalist |
| 1980 | Paperback | Stuart Berg Flexner | I Hear America Talking: An Illustrated History of American Words and Phrases | Finalist |
| 1980 | Paperback | Elisabeth L. Scharlatt (editor) | Kids: Day In and Day Out: a parents' manual | |

##### History

| Year | Category | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Henry A. Kissinger | The White House Years | | Winner |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Robert Dallek | Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 | Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States from 1933 to 1945 | Finalist |
| 1980 | Hardcover | George F. Kennan | Decline of Bismarck's European Order: Franco-Russian Relations, 1875–1890 | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel | Utopian Thought in the Western World | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Telford Taylor | Munich: The Price of Peace | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Paperback | Barbara W. Tuchman | A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century | | Winner |
| 1980 | Paperback | James Lincoln Collier | The Making of Jazz: A Comprehensive History | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Paperback | Daniel J. Kevles | The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Paperback | Allen Weinstein | Perjury: The Hiss–Chambers Case | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Paperback | Theodore H. White | In Search of History: A Personal Adventure | | Finalist |
| 1981 | Hardcover | John Boswell | Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality | | Winner |
| 1981 | Hardcover | James H. Billington | Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith | | Finalist |
| 1981 | Hardcover | Steven Ozment | The Age of Reform, 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe | | Finalist |
| 1981 | Hardcover | Carl E. Schorske | Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture | | Finalist |
| 1981 | Hardcover | Page Smith | The Shaping of America: A People's History of the Young Republic | | Finalist |
| 1981 | Paperback | Leon F. Litwack | Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery | | Winner |
| 1981 | Paperback | Richard Drinnon | The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building | | Finalist |
| 1981 | Paperback | A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. | In the Matter of Color: The Colonial Period | | Finalist |
| 1981 | Paperback | Telford Taylor | Munich: The Price of Peace | | Finalist |
| 1981 | Paperback | Howard Zinn | A People's History of the United States | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Hardcover | Peter J. Powell | People of the Sacred Mountain: A History of the Northern Cheyenne Chiefs and Warrior Societies, 1830–1879 | | Winner |
| 1982 | Hardcover | Ray Huang | 1587, a Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Hardcover | Donald Neff | Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower Takes America into the Middle East | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Hardcover | Russell F. Weigley | Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany, 1944–1945 | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Hardcover | C. Vann Woodward (editor) | Mary Chestnut's Civil War | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Paperback | Robert Wohl | The Generation of 1914 | | Winner |
| 1982 | Paperback | Malcolm Cowley | The Dream of the Golden Mountains | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Paperback | Robert Dallek | Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 | Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States from 1933 to 1945 | Finalist |
| 1982 | Paperback | Carl N. Degler | At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present | | Finalist |
| 1982 | Paperback | Charles Rembar | The Law of the Land: The Evolution of Our Legal System | | Finalist |
| 1983 | Hardcover | Alan Brinkley | Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression | | Winner |
| 1983 | Hardcover | Gordon A. Craig | The Germans | | Finalist |
| 1983 | Hardcover | Robert Darnton | The Literary Underground of the Old Regime | | Finalist |
| 1983 | Hardcover | John Putnam Demos | Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England | | Finalist |
| 1983 | Hardcover | William H. McNeill | The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force and Society Since A.D. 1000 | | Finalist |
| 1983 | Hardcover | Bertram Wyatt-Brown | Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South | | |
| 1983 | Paperback | Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel | Utopian Thought in the Western World | | Winner |
| 1983 | Paperback | George M. Fredrickson | White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History | | Finalist |
| 1983 | Paperback | Ray Huang | 1587, a Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline | | Finalist |
| 1983 | Paperback | John Noble Wilford | The Mapmakers | | Finalist |

##### Religion/Inspiration

| Year | Category | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Elaine Pagels | The Gnostic Gospels | Gnostic Gospels | Winner |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Peter L. Berger | The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Brevard S. Childs | Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture | Canonical criticism, Biblical interpretation that focuses on the text of the biblical canon itself | Finalist |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Peter Kreeft | Love Is Stronger Than Death | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Jack B. Rogers and Donald K. McKim | The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach | Biblical authority | Finalist |
| 1980 | Paperback | Sheldon Vanauken | A Severe Mercy | | Winner |
| 1980 | Paperback | Richard Bach | Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah | | Finalist |
| 1980 | Paperback | Catherine Marshall | The Helper | Holy Ghost, part of the Trinity in Christianity | Finalist |

##### Science

| Year | Category | Author | Title | Result |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Douglas Hofstadter | Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid | Winner |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Freeman Dyson | Disturbing the Universe | Finalist |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Douglas Faulkner and Richard Chesher | Living Corals | Finalist |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Bernd Heinrich | Bumblebee Economics | Finalist |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Horace Freeland Judson | The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology | Finalist |
| 1980 | Paperback | Gary Zukav | The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics | Winner |
| 1980 | Paperback | William J. Kaufmann | Black Holes and Warped Spacetime | Finalist |
| 1980 | Paperback | Thomas S. Kuhn | The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change | Finalist |
| 1980 | Paperback | Anne W. Simon | The Thin Edge: Coast and Man in Crisis | Finalist |
| 1981 | Hardcover | Stephen Jay Gould | The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections on Natural History | Winner |
| 1981 | Hardcover | Claude C. Albritton | The Abyss of Time: Changing Conceptions of the Earth's Antiquity after the Sixteenth Century | Finalist |
| 1981 | Hardcover | René Dubos | The Wooing of Earth | Finalist |
| 1981 | Hardcover | Timothy Ferris | Galaxies | Finalist |
| 1981 | Hardcover | Carl Sagan | Cosmos | Finalist |
| 1981 | Paperback | Lewis Thomas | The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher | Winner |
| 1981 | Paperback | Carl Sagan | Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science | Finalist |
| 1981 | Paperback | Joseph Silk | The Big Bang: The Creation and Evolution of the Universe | Finalist |
| 1981 | Paperback | Walter Sullivan | Black Holes: the Edge of the Space, the End of Time | Finalist |
| 1982 | Hardcover | Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey | Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind | Winner |
| 1982 | Hardcover | Gene Bylinsky | Life in Darwin's Universe: Evolution and the Cosmos | Finalist |
| 1982 | Hardcover | Eric Chaisson | Cosmic Dawn: The Origins of Matter and Life | Finalist |
| 1982 | Hardcover | Steven J. Gould | The Mismeasure of Man | Finalist |
| 1982 | Hardcover | Steven M. Stanley | The New Evolutionary Timetable: Fossils, Genes and the Origin of Species | Finalist |
| 1982 | Paperback | Fred Alan Wolf | Taking the Quantum Leap: The New Physics for Nonscientists | Winner |
| 1982 | Paperback | Freeman Dyson | Disturbing the Universe | Finalist |
| 1982 | Paperback | Howard E. Gruber | Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity | Finalist |
| 1982 | Paperback | Bernd Heinrich | Bumblebee Economics | Finalist |
| 1982 | Paperback | Guy Murchie | The Seven Mysteries of Life: An Exploration in Science & Philosophy | Finalist |
| 1983 | Hardcover | Abraham Pais | "Subtle is the Lord ...": The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein | Winner |
| 1983 | Hardcover | Philip J. Hilts | Scientific Temperaments: Three Lives in Contemporary Science | Finalist |
| 1983 | Hardcover | Melvin Konner | The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit | Finalist |
| 1983 | Hardcover | Ernst Mayr | The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance | Finalist |
| 1983 | Hardcover | Heinz R. Pagels | Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature | Finalist |
| 1983 | Paperback | Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh | The Mathematical Experience | Finalist |
| 1983 | Paperback | Morris Kline | Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty | Finalist |
| 1983 | Paperback | Cynthia Moss | Portrait in the Wild: Animal Behavior in the Western World | Finalist |
| 1983 | Paperback | Berton Roueché | The Medical Detectives | Finalist |
| | | G. Ledyard Stebbins | Darwin to DNA: Molecules to Humanity (new) | |

#### 1983/1984

1983 entries were published during 1982, the pattern established for 1949 books in 1950. Winners in 27 categories were announced April 13 and privately celebrated April 28, 1983.
The awards practically went out of business that spring. Their salvation with a reduced program to be determined was announced in November. The revamp was completed only next summer, with an autumn program recognizing books published during the award year (initially, preceding November to current October). There were no awards for books published in 1983 before November.
By this time the awards were sponsored by the book publishers alone. From 1980 (for 1979 books) they were termed "American Book Awards", and the National Book Awards were considered to have been discontinued after 1979.
1984 entries for the "revamped" awards in merely three categories were published November 1983 to October 1984; that is, approximately during the award year. Eleven finalists were announced October 17. Winners were announced and celebrated November 15, 1984.

#### 1984–1989

National Book Award for Nonfiction winners and finalists, 1984–1989 :
| Year | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 1984 | Robert V. Remini | Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833–1845 | Andrew Jackson, President of the United States from 1829 to 1837 | Winner |
| 1984 | Howard M. Feinstein | Becoming William James | William James, American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist (1842–1910) | Finalist |
| 1984 | Richard Marius | Thomas More: A Biography | Thomas More, English statesman and philosopher (1478–1535) | Finalist |
| 1984 | Ernst Pawel | The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka | Franz Kafka, Bohemian writer from Prague (1883–1924) | Finalist |
| 1984 | Eudora Welty | One Writer's Beginnings | Eudora Welty, American short story writer, novelist and photographer | Finalist |
| 1985 | J. Anthony Lukas | Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families | | Winner |
| 1985 | Daniel J. Kevles | In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Use of Human Heredity | | Finalist |
| 1985 | Walter A. McDougall | ...the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age | | Finalist |
| 1986 | Barry Lopez | Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape | | Winner |
| 1986 | John W. Dower | War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War | | Finalist |
| 1986 | Richard Kluger | The Paper: The Life and Times of the New York Herald Tribune | New York Herald Tribune, Defunct American newspaper published in New York City | Finalist |
| 1986 | Michael S. Reynolds | The Young Hemingway | Ernest Hemingway, American author and journalist (1899–1961) | Finalist |
| 1986 | Theodore Rosengarten | Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter | | Finalist |
| 1987 | Richard Rhodes | The Making of the Atomic Bomb | | Winner |
| 1987 | David Herbert Donald | Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe | Thomas Wolfe, American novelist | Finalist |
| 1987 | James Gleick | Chaos: Making a New Science | | Finalist |
| 1987 | Claudia Koonz | Mothers in the Fatherland | | Finalist |
| 1987 | Robert A.M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin, and Thomas Mellins | New York 1930: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Two World Wars | | Finalist |
| 1988 | Neil Sheehan | A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam | John Paul Vann, Lieutenant colonel in the United States Army, known for his role in the Vietnam War (1924–1972) | Winner |
| 1988 | Eric Foner | Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 | Reconstruction era in the United States | Finalist |
| 1988 | Peter Gay | Freud: A Life for Our Time | Sigmund Freud, Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis (1856–1939) | Finalist |
| 1988 | Brenda Maddox | Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom | Molly Bloom, fictional character, wife of the main protagonist in James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses | Finalist |
| 1988 | Jack McLaughlin | Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Builder | Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States from 1801 to 1809, and Monticello, Jefferson's primary residence | Finalist |
| 1989 | Thomas L. Friedman | From Beirut to Jerusalem | | Winner |
| 1989 | Taylor Branch | Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63 | | Finalist |
| 1989 | McGeorge Bundy | Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years | | Finalist |
| 1989 | William Pfaff | Barbarian Sentiments: How the American Century Ends | | Finalist |
| 1989 | Marilynne Robinson | Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State and Nuclear Pollution | | Finalist |

### 1990s

National Book Award for Nonfiction winners and finalists, 1990–1999 :
| Year | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 1990 | Ron Chernow | The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance | | Winner |
| 1990 | Samuel G. Freedman | Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students and Their High School | | Finalist |
| 1990 | Roger Morris | Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician | Richard Nixon, President of the United States from 1969 to 1974 | Finalist |
| 1990 | Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith | Jackson Pollock: An American Saga | Jackson Pollock, American abstract painter (1912–1956) | Finalist |
| 1990 | T.H. Watkins | Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1847–1952 | Harold L. Ickes, American politician (1874–1952) | Finalist |
| 1991 | Orlando Patterson | Freedom, Vol. 1: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture | | Winner |
| 1991 | E.J. Dionne, Jr. | Why Americans Hate Politics | | Finalist |
| 1991 | Melissa Fay Greene | Praying for Sheetrock | | Finalist |
| 1991 | R.W.B. Lewis | The Jameses: A Family Narrative | Henry James, American-born British writer and literary critic, and William James, American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist (1842–1910) | Finalist |
| 1991 | Diane Wood Middlebrook | Anne Sexton: A Biography | Anne Sexton, American poet (1928–1974) | Finalist |
| 1992 | Paul Monette | Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story | Paul Monette, American author, poet, and activist (1945–1995) | Winner |
| 1992 | Edward L. Ayers | The Promise of the New South | | Finalist |
| 1992 | James Gleick | Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman | Richard Feynman, American theoretical physicist (1918–1988) | Finalist |
| 1992 | David McCullough | Truman | Harry S. Truman, President of the United States from 1945 to 1953 | Finalist |
| 1992 | Garry Wills | Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America | Gettysburg Address, Speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln | Finalist |
| 1993 | Gore Vidal | United States: Essays 1952–1992 | | Winner |
| 1993 | William Leach | Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture | | Finalist |
| 1993 | David Levering Lewis | W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 | W. E. B. Du Bois, American sociologist, historian, socialist, activist, and writer | Finalist |
| 1993 | Richard Slotkin | Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America | | Finalist |
| 1993 | Peter Svenson | Battlefield: Farming a Civil War Battleground | | Finalist |
| 1994 | Sherwin B. Nuland | How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter | | Winner |
| 1994 | John Putnam Demos | The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America | | Finalist |
| 1994 | Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson | Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas | Clarence Thomas, US Supreme Court justice since 1991 | Finalist |
| 1994 | John Edgar Wideman | Fatheralong: A Meditation on Fathers, Sons, Race and Society | | Finalist |
| 1994 | Tobias Wolff | In Pharoah's Army: Memories of the Lost War | Tobias Wolff, American writer and educator | Finalist |
| 1995 | Tina Rosenberg | The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism | | Winner |
| 1995 | Dennis Covington | Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia | | Finalist |
| 1995 | Daniel C. Dennett | Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life | | Finalist |
| 1995 | Jonathan Harr | A Civil Action | Anderson v. Cryovac, 1986 US federal lawsuit concerning toxic contamination of groundwater | Finalist |
| 1995 | Maryanne Vollers | Ghosts of Mississippi | | Finalist |
| 1996 | James P. Carroll | An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War that Came Between Us | | Winner |
| 1996 | Melissa Fay Greene | The Temple Bombing | | Finalist |
| 1996 | Paul Hendrickson | The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War | Robert McNamara, American businessman and Secretary of Defense | Finalist |
| 1996 | Cary Reich | The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller: Worlds to Conquer, 1908–1958 | Nelson Rockefeller, Vice president of the United States from 1974 to 1977 | Finalist |
| 1996 | Anne Roiphe | Fruitful: A Real Mother in the Modern World | | Finalist |
| 1997 | Joseph J. Ellis | American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson | Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States from 1801 to 1809 | Finalist |
| 1997 | David I. Kertzer | The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara | Edgardo Mortara | Winner |
| 1997 | Jamaica Kincaid | My Brother | | Finalist |
| 1997 | Thomas Lynch | The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade | Funeral directors, Professionals involved in the business of funeral rites | Finalist |
| 1997 | Sam Tanenhaus | Whittaker Chambers: A Biography | Whittaker Chambers, Defected communist spy, writer, editor (1901–1961) | Finalist |
| 1998 | Edward Ball | Slaves in the Family | | Winner |
| 1998 | Harold Bloom | Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human | William Shakespeare, English poet, playwright, and actor (1564–1616) | Finalist |
| 1998 | Yaffa Eliach | There Once Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok | Jewish Eishyshok | Finalist |
| 1998 | Beth Kephart | A Slant of Sun: One Child's Courage | | Finalist |
| 1998 | Henry Mayer | All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery | William Lloyd Garrison, American journalist and abolitionist (1805–1879) | Finalist |
| 1999 | John W. Dower | Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II | | Winner |
| 1999 | Natalie Angier | Woman: An Intimate Geography | | Finalist |
| 1999 | Mark Bowden | Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War | | Finalist |
| 1999 | John Phillip Santos | Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation | John Phillip Santos, American freelance filmmaker, producer, journalist, author | Finalist |
| 1999 | Judith Thurman | Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette | Colette, French novelist | Finalist |

### 2000s

National Book Award for Nonfiction winners and finalists, 2000–2009 :
| Year | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 2000 | Nathaniel Philbrick | In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex | Whaleship Essex, American whaleship from Nantucket, Massachusetts | Winner |
| 2000 | Jacques Barzun | From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present | | Finalist |
| 2000 | Alice Kaplan | The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach | Robert Brasillach, French writer and journalist | Finalist |
| 2000 | David Levering Lewis | W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963 | W.E.B. Du Bois, American sociologist, historian, socialist, activist, and writer | Finalist |
| 2000 | Patrick Tierney | Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon | | Finalist |
| 2001 | Andrew Solomon | The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression | | Winner |
| 2001 | Marie Arana | American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood | | Finalist |
| 2001 | Nina Bernstein | The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care | | Finalist |
| 2001 | David James Duncan | My Story as Told by Water | | Finalist |
| 2001 | Jan T. Gross | Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland | | Finalist |
| 2002 | Robert A. Caro | Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson | Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States from 1963 to 1969 | Winner |
| 2002 | Devra Davis | When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution | 1948 Donora smog, Major Pennsylvania air pollution incident | Finalist |
| 2002 | Atul Gawande | Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science | | Finalist |
| 2002 | Elizabeth Gilbert | The Last American Man | Eustace Conway | Finalist |
| 2002 | Steve Olson | Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past through Our Genes | | Finalist |
| 2003 | Carlos Eire | Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy | | Winner |
| 2003 | Anne Applebaum | Gulag: A History | | Finalist |
| 2003 | George Howe Colt | The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home | | Finalist |
| 2003 | John D'Emilio | Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin | Bayard Rustin, American civil rights activist (1912–1987) | Finalist |
| 2003 | Erik Larson | The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America | | Finalist |
| 2004 | Kevin Boyle | Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age | | Winner |
| 2004 | David Hackett Fischer | Washington's Crossing | | Finalist |
| 2004 | Jennifer Gonnerman | Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett | | Finalist |
| 2004 | Stephen Greenblatt | Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare | William Shakespeare, English poet, playwright, and actor (1564–1616) | Finalist |
| 2004 | 9/11 Commission | 9/11 Commission Report | The 9/11 Commission's final report on the September 11 attacks | Finalist |
| 2005 | Joan Didion | The Year of Magical Thinking | Joan Didion, American writer (1934–2021) | Winner |
| 2005 | Alan Burdick | Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion | | Finalist |
| 2005 | Leo Damrosch | Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius | Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer (1712–1778) | Finalist |
| 2005 | Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn | 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers | September 11 attacks, 2001 Islamist terrorist attacks in the United States | Finalist |
| 2005 | Adam Hochschild | Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves | | Finalist |
| 2006 | Timothy Egan | The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl | | Winner |
| 2006 | Taylor Branch | At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 | | Finalist |
| 2006 | Rajiv Chandrasekaran | Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone | Iraq's Green Zone, Area in Baghdad, Iraq | Finalist |
| 2006 | Peter Hessler | Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present | | Finalist |
| 2006 | Lawrence Wright | The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 | Al-Qaeda, Salafi jihadist organization founded in 1988 | Finalist |
| 2007 | Tim Weiner | Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA | Central Intelligence Agency, National intelligence agency of the United States | Winner |
| 2007 | Edwidge Danticat | Brother, I'm Dying | Edwidge Danticat, Haitian-American writer | Finalist |
| 2007 | Christopher Hitchens | God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything | | Finalist |
| 2007 | Woody Holton | Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution | | Finalist |
| 2007 | Arnold Rampersad | Ralph Ellison: A Biography | Ralph Ellison, American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer (1913–1994) | Finalist |
| 2008 | Annette Gordon-Reed | The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family | | Winner |
| 2008 | Drew Gilpin Faust | This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War | American Civil War, 1861–1865 conflict in the United States | Finalist |
| 2008 | Jane Mayer | The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals | War on terror, Ongoing international military campaign following the September 11 attacks | Finalist |
| 2008 | Jim Sheeler | Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives | | Finalist |
| 2008 | Joan Wickersham | The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order | | Finalist |
| 2009 | T. J. Stiles | The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt | Cornelius Vanderbilt, American businessman and tycoon (1794–1877) | Winner |
| 2009 | David M. Carroll | Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook | | Finalist |
| 2009 | Sean B. Carroll | Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species | | Finalist |
| 2009 | Greg Grandin | Fordlândia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City | Fordlândia, Village in Pará, Brazil | Finalist |
| 2009 | Adrienne Mayor | The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy | Mithradates, King of Pontus from 120 to 63 BC | Finalist |

### 2010s

National Book Award for Nonfiction winners and finalists, 2010–2019 :
| Year | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 2010 | Patti Smith | Just Kids | Robert Mapplethorpe, American photographer | Winner |
| 2010 | Barbara Demick | Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea | North Korea, Country in East Asia | Finalist |
| 2010 | John W. Dower | Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq | | Finalist |
| 2010 | Justin Spring | Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade | Samuel Steward, American poet, novelist, tattoo artist | Finalist |
| 2010 | Megan K. Stack | Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War | | Finalist |
| 2011 | Stephen Greenblatt | The Swerve: How the World Became Modern | | Winner |
| 2011 | Deborah Baker | The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism | Maryam Jameelah, American writer | Finalist |
| 2011 | Mary Gabriel | Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution | Karl Marx, German philosopher (1818–1883), and Jenny von Westphalen, German theatre critic and political activist | Finalist |
| 2011 | Manning Marable | Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention | Malcolm X, African-American human rights activist (1925–1965) | Finalist |
| 2011 | Lauren Redniss | Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love & Fallout | Marie Curie, Polish-French physicist and chemist (1867–1934), and Pierre Curie, French physicist (1859–1906) | Finalist |
| 2012 | Katherine Boo | Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity | Mumbai, Capital of Maharashtra, India | Winner |
| 2012 | Anne Applebaum | Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945–1956 | | Finalist |
| 2012 | Robert A. Caro | The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson | Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States from 1963 to 1969 | Finalist |
| 2012 | Domingo Martinez | The Boy Kings of Texas | | Finalist |
| 2012 | Anthony Shadid | House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East | Anthony Shadid, American journalist | Finalist |
| 2013 | George Packer | The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America | | Winner |
| 2013 | Jill Lepore | Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin | Jane Franklin Mecom, 18th-century American and sister of Benjamin Franklin | Finalist |
| 2013 | Wendy Lower | Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields | | Finalist |
| 2013 | Alan Taylor | The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832 | | Finalist |
| 2013 | Lawrence Wright | Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief | | Finalist |
| 2014 | Evan Osnos | Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China | | Winner |
| 2014 | Roz Chast | Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? | | Finalist |
| 2014 | Anand Gopal | No Good Men Among The Living | | Finalist |
| 2014 | John Lahr | Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh | Tennessee Williams, American playwright (1911–1983) | Finalist |
| 2014 | E.O. Wilson | The Meaning of Human Existence | | Finalist |
| 2015 | Ta-Nehisi Coates | Between the World and Me | | Winner |
| 2015 | Sally Mann | Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs | | Finalist |
| 2015 | Sy Montgomery | The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness | | Finalist |
| 2015 | Carla Power | If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran | | Finalist |
| 2015 | Tracy K. Smith | Ordinary Light: A Memoir | Tracy K. Smith, American poet | Finalist |
| 2016 | Ibram X. Kendi | Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America | | Winner |
| 2016 | Arlie Russell Hochschild | Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right | | Finalist |
| 2016 | Viet Thanh Nguyen | Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War | | Finalist |
| 2016 | Andrés Reséndez | The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America | | Finalist |
| 2016 | Heather Ann Thompson | Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy | Attica Prison riot, 1971 prisoner rebellion, Attica, New York prison | Finalist |
| 2017 | Masha Gessen | The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia | | Winner |
| 2017 | Erica Armstrong Dunbar | Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge | | Finalist |
| 2017 | Frances FitzGerald | The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America | | Finalist |
| 2017 | David Grann | Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI | Osage Indian murders, Series of murders of Osage Indians in Osage County, Oklahoma | Finalist |
| 2017 | Nancy MacLean | Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America | | Finalist |
| 2018 | Jeffrey C. Stewart | The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke | Alain LeRoy Locke, American philosopher and writer (1885–1954) | Winner |
| 2018 | Colin G. Calloway | The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation | | Finalist |
| 2018 | Victoria Johnson | American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic | David Hosack, American physician, botanist, and educator (1769–1835) | Finalist |
| 2018 | Sarah Smarsh | Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth | | Finalist |
| 2018 | Adam Winkler | We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights | Corporate personhood and the rights of corporations under the U.S. Constitution | Finalist |
| 2019 | Sarah M. Broom | The Yellow House | | Winner |
| 2019 | Tressie McMillan Cottom | Thick: And Other Essays | | Finalist |
| 2019 | Carolyn Forché | What You Have Heard is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance | | Finalist |
| 2019 | David Treuer | The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present | | Finalist |
| 2019 | Albert Woodfox with Leslie George | Solitary | Solitary confinement, Strict imprisonment form | Finalist |

### 2020s

National Book Award for Nonfiction winners and finalists, 2020–2029 :
| Year | Author | Title | Subject | Result |
| 2020 | Les Payne and Tamara Payne | The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X | Malcolm X, African-American human rights activist (1925–1965) | Winner |
| 2020 | Claudio Saunt | Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory | President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830 | Finalist |
| 2020 | Jenn Shapland | My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir | An intermingled autobiography and biography of Carson McCullers | Finalist |
| 2020 | Karla Cornejo Villavicencio | The Undocumented Americans | Part memoir, part essays about undocumented day laborers | Finalist |
| 2020 | Jerald Walker | How To Make a Slave and Other Essays | A collection of autobiographical vignettes | Finalist |
| 2021 | Tiya Miles | All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake | Ashley's Sack, a mid-1800s cloth sack embroidered with account of a slave sale of a 9-year-old girl | Winner |
| 2021 | Hanif Abdurraqib | A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance | A collection of essays about black culture in America | Finalist |
| 2021 | Lucas Bessire | Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains | The author's journey to his ancestral home of southwest Kansas, and the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer | Finalist |
| 2021 | Grace M Cho | Tastes Like War: A Memoir | The link between food and mental health | Finalist |
| 2021 | Nicole Eustace | Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America | The murder of an indigenous hunter and the eventual trial which led to the Great Treaty of 1722 | Finalist |
| 2022 | Imani Perry | South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon To Understand the Soul of a Nation | A chronicle of the author's journey to her native Alabama, positing the idea that to better understand America, one must first understand the American South. | Winner |
| 2022 | Meghan O'Rourke | The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness | A memoir detailing the author's long struggle with debilitating chronic illness and the medical system's inadequacy in properly diagnosing and treating her. | Finalist |
| 2022 | David Quammen | Breathless: The Scientific Race To Defeat a Deadly Virus | The lead-up to the COVID-19 pandemic | Finalist |
| 2022 | Ingrid Rojas Contreras | The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir | The author recalls her grandfather using his healing gift to talk to the dead, predicting the future and "moving the clouds" | Finalist |
| 2022 | Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa | His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice | Biography of George Floyd (1973–2020), an African-American man murdered by a police officer | Finalist |
| 2023 | Ned Blackhawk | The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of US History | The central role of Native Americans in the formation and development of the USA | Winner |
| 2023 | Cristina Rivera Garza | Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice | The murder of the author's sister in Mexico City by an ex-boyfriend | Finalist |
| 2023 | Christina Sharpe | Ordinary Notes | The legacy of white supremacy | Finalist |
| 2023 | Raja Shehadeh | We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir | Aziz, a Palestinian human rights activist who was assassinated in 1985 outside his home in Ramallah | Finalist |
| 2023 | John Vaillant | Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World | The 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire as a window to a future of climate catastrophe | Finalist |
| 2024 | Jason De León | Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling | Smugglers from Honduras who tried to get migrants across the Mexican border and into the USA | Winner |
| 2024 | Eliza Griswold | Circle of Hope: A Reckoning With Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church | A portrait of a church in Philadelphia as it descended into crisis over issues of race and sexuality | Finalist |
| 2024 | Kate Manne | Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia | The bias against body size. "Part memoir, part polemic, and part (all?) philosophy." | Finalist |
| 2024 | Salman Rushdie | Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder | The attack in 2022 when the author was stabbed at an appearance in Chautauqua, New York, and his recovery since then | Finalist |
| 2024 | Deborah Jackson Taffa | Whiskey Tender | A memoir of the author's life from 1972, when she was 3, to 1987, when she graduated from high school, interwoven with a history of Native American oppression and survival | Finalist |

## Repeat winners

    See also Winners of multiple U.S. National Book Awards
Three books have won two literary National Book Awards (that is, excluding graphics), all in nonfiction subcategories of 1964 to 1983.
* John Clive, Thomas Babington Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian
       1974 Biography; 1974 History
* Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
       1979 Contemporary Thought; 1980 General Nonfiction, Paperback
* Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
       1975 Arts and Letters; 1975 Science
Matthiessen and Thomas won three Awards (as did Saul Bellow, all fiction). Matthiessen won the 2008 fiction award. Thomas is one of several authors of two Award-winning books in nonfiction categories.
* Justin Kaplan, 1961, 1981 (Arts and Letters, Biography/Autobiography)
* George F. Kennan, 1957, 1968 (Nonfiction, History and Biography)
* Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1936, 1939 (Non-Fiction, Non-Fiction)
* David McCullough, 1978, 1982 (History, Autobiography/Biography)
* Arthur Schlesinger, 1966, 1979 (History and biography, Biography and Autobiography)
* Frances Steegmuller, 1971, 1981 (Arts and Letters, Translation)
* Lewis Thomas, 1975, 1981 (Arts and Letters and Science, Science)