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Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction

American award for nonfiction books

Summary

American award for nonfiction books

The Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are awarded annually for the "Letters, Drama, and Music" category. The award is given to a nonfiction book written by an American author and published during the preceding calendar year that is ineligible for any other Pulitzer Prize. The Prize has been awarded since 1962; beginning in 1980, one to three finalists have been announced alongside the winner.

Recipients

During the year 1969, 1973, 1986, and 2020, two winners were awarded the prize An additional one to three finalists have been announced alongside the winner beginning in 1980. Two authors have won multiple prizes: Barbara W. Tuchman in 1963 and 1972, and Edward O. Wilson in 1979 and 1991. Additionally, two authors have been finalists multiple times: Steven Pinker (1998, 2003) and John McPhee (1982, 1987, 1991); McPhee won the Prize in 1999. Three winning works were also finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for History: A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan (1989), Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America by Garry Wills (1993), and The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America by Greg Grandin (2020).

A black-and-white photo of Barbara W. Tuchman in 1971 — [[Barbara W. Tuchman]] won the Prize in 1963 for her book on [[World War I]], and again in 1972 for her work on early 20th-century [[China]].

A color photo of Edward O. Wilson in 2003 — [[Edward O. Wilson]] has won the Prize twice for his books on [[biology]]: once in 1979, and again in 1991 in collaboration with [[Bert Hölldobler]].

A black-and-white photo of John McPhee — [[John McPhee]] was a Prize finalist three times in 1982, 1987, and 1991, before winning in 1999.

Year	Author(s)	Book	Publisher
****	The Making of the President 1960	Atheneum
****	The Guns of August	Macmillan
****	Anti-Intellectualism in American Life	Random House
****	O Strange New World: American Culture: The Formative Years	Viking
****	Wandering through Winter: A Naturalist's Record of a 20,000-Mile Journey through the North American Winter	Dodd
****	The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture	Cornell University Press
****	The Story of Civilization: Rousseau and Revolution	Simon and Schuster
****
****	So Human an Animal: How We Are Shaped by Surroundings and Events	Scribner
****	The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History	World
****	Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence	W. W. Norton
****	The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945	Random House
****	Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–1945	Macmillan
****	Children of Crisis, Volumes II and III	Little
****	Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam	Little
****	The Denial of Death	Free Press
Macmillan
****	Pilgrim at Tinker Creek	Harper's Magazine Press
****	Why Survive?: Being Old in America	Harper
****	Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay	Little
****	The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence	Random House
****	On Human Nature	Harvard University Press
****	Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid	Basic Books
	The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination	Yale University Press
	The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher	Viking
****	Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture	Knopf
	Southerners: A Journalist's Odyssey	New American Library
	China Men	Knopf
	Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War	Little
****	The Soul of a New Machine	Atlantic
Little
	Basin and Range	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
	Mrs. Harris: The Death of the Scarsdale Diet Doctor	Harcourt
****	Is There No Place on Earth for Me?	Houghton Mifflin
	Terrorists and Novelists	Knopf
	The Fate of the Earth	Knopf
****	The Social Transformation of American Medicine	Basic Books
	Conversations with the Enemy	Putnam
	Wild Justice	Harper
****	"The Good War": An Oral History of World War II	Pantheon
	Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature in the Modern Era	Holt
	Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World	Congdon and Weed
****	Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White	Times Books
****	Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families	Knopf
	Habits and the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life	University of California Press
****	Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land	Times Books
	Rain or Shine: A Family Memoir	Knopf
	Rising from the Plains	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
****	The Making of the Atomic Bomb	Simon and Schuster
	Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Society	Simon and Schuster
	Chaos: Making a New Science	Viking
****	A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam	Random House
	Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years	Random House
	Coming of Age in the Milky Way	William Morrow
	The Last Farmer	Summit Books
****	And Their Children after Them	Pantheon
****
	A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East, 1914–1922	Holt
	Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History	W. W. Norton
****	The Ants	Harvard University Press (Belknap)
****
	River of Traps: A Village Life	University of New Mexico Press
	Looking for a Ship	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
****	The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power	Simon and Schuster
	Broken Vessels	Godine
	Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics	W. W. Norton
****	Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America	Simon and Schuster
	A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War	Doubleday
	Where the Buffalo Roam: Restoring America's Great Plains	Grove
	Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father	Viking
****	Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire	Random House
	The Cultivation of Hatred: The Bourgeois Experience, Victoria to Freud	W. W. Norton
	The End of the Twentieth Century: And the End of the Modern Age	Ticknor and Fields
****	The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time	Knopf
	Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story	Random House
	How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter	Knopf
****	The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts after Communism	Random House
	Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life	Simon and Schuster
	Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology	Pantheon
****	Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris	Knopf
	The Inheritance: How Three Families and America Moved from Roosevelt to Reagan and Beyond	Simon and Schuster
	Fame and Folly	Knopf
****	Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies	W. W. Norton
	Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster	Villard
	How the Mind Works	W. W. Norton
****	Annals of the Former World	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
	Crime and Punishment in America	Metropolitan Books
	The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do	Free Press
****	Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II	New Press
W. W. Norton
	The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory	W. W. Norton
	Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
North Point Press
****	Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan	HarperCollins
	Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing	Random House
	A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius	Simon and Schuster
****	Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution	Simon and Schuster
	War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals	Scribner
	The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression	Scribner
****	"A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide	Basic Books
	The Anthropology of Turquoise: Meditations on Landscape, Art, and Spirit	Pantheon
	The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature	Viking
****	Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps	Doubleday
	Rembrandt's Jews	University of Chicago Press
	The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military	W. W. Norton
****	Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001	Penguin
	Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found	Knopf
	The Devil's Highway: A True Story	Little
****	Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya	Holt
	Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945	Penguin
	The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
****	The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11	Knopf
	Crazy: A Father's Search through America's Mental Health Madness	Putnam
	Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq	Penguin
****	The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945	HarperCollins
	The Cigarette Century	Basic Books
	The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
****	Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II	Doubleday	"A precise and eloquent work that examines a deliberate system of racial suppression and that rescues a multitude of atrocities from virtual obscurity."
	Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age	Bantam Books	"An authoritative, deeply researched book that achieves an extraordinary balance in weighing two mighty protagonists against each other."
	The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe	Free Press	"A heavily documented exploration of the overlooked suffering of noncombatants in the victory over Nazi Germany, written with the dash of a novelist and the authority of a scholar."
****	The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy	Doubleday	"A well documented narrative that examines the terrifying doomsday competition between two superpowers and how weapons of mass destruction still imperil humankind."
	How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities	Farrar, Straus and Giroux	"A work that probes the complexity of the Great Recession, using solid research and precise documentation to reveal not only a gripping human drama but also a tense clash of ideas."
	The Evolution of God	Little	"A sweeping look at the origins and development of religious belief throughout human history."
****	The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer	Scribner	"An elegant inquiry, at once clinical and personal, into the long history of an insidious disease that, despite treatment breakthroughs, still bedevils medical science."
	The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains	W. W. Norton	"A thought provoking exploration of the Internet's physical and cultural consequences, rendering highly technical material intelligible to the general reader."
	Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History	Scribner	"A memorable examination of the longest and most brutal of all the wars between European settlers and a single Indian tribe."
****	The Swerve: How the World Became Modern	W. W. Norton	"A provocative book arguing that an obscure work of philosophy, discovered nearly 600 years ago, changed the course of history by anticipating the science and sensibilities of today."
	One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing	W. W. Norton	"A resilient author's account of caring for a stricken husband, sharing fears and insights as she explores neurology and ponders the gift of words."
	Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men	PublicAffairs	"An evocative, deeply researched book probing the causes and effects of a global imbalance in the gender ratio."
****	Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America	Harper	"A richly detailed chronicle of racial injustice in the Florida town of Groveland in 1949, involving four black men falsely accused of rape and drawing a civil rights crusader, and eventual Supreme Court justice, into the legal battle."
	Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity	Random House	"An engrossing book that plunges the reader into an Indian slum in the shadow of gleaming hotels near Mumbai's airport, revealing a complex subculture where poverty does not extinguish aspiration."
	The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature	Viking	"A fascinating book that, for a year, closely follows the natural wonders occurring within a tiny patch of old-growth Tennessee forest."
****	Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation	Bantam Books	"A book that deftly combines investigative reporting and historical research to probe a New Jersey seashore town's cluster of childhood cancers linked to water and air pollution."
	The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide	Knopf	"A disquieting exploration of the role played by the American president and his national security advisor in the 1971 Pakistani civil war, a bloodbath that killed hundreds of thousands and created millions of refugees."
	The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War	Simon and Schuster	"An engrossing look at how a tenacious general became the ringleader of efforts to reshape America's military strategy in the post-Cold War age."
****	The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History	Holt	"An exploration of nature that forces readers to consider the threat posed by human behavior to a world of astonishing diversity."
	No Good Men among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes	Metropolitan Books	"A remarkable work of nonfiction storytelling that exposes the cascade of blunders that doomed America's misbegotten intervention in Afghanistan."
	Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China	Farrar, Straus and Giroux	"The story of a vast country and society in the grip of transformation, calmly surveyed, smartly reported and portrayed with exacting strokes."
****	Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS	Doubleday	"A deeply reported book of remarkable clarity showing how the flawed rationale for the Iraq War led to the explosive growth of the Islamic State."
	Between the World and Me	Spiegel and Grau	"A powerful book that passionately and bleakly propounds the hazards faced by black men coming of age in America."
	If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran	Holt	"A perceptive account of a year spent reading the Quran, displaying grace, subtlety and humane intellect as antidotes to rampant Islamophobia."
****	Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City	Crown	"For a deeply researched exposé that showed how mass evictions after the 2008 economic crash were less a consequence than a cause of poverty."
	In a Different Key: The Story of Autism	Crown	"For a passionate work of advocacy that traces public perceptions about autism from chillingly cruel beginnings to a kinder but still troubling present."
	The Politics of Mourning: Death and Honor in Arlington National Cemetery	Harvard University Press	"For a luminous investigation of how policies and practices at Arlington National Cemetery have mirrored the nation's fierce battles over race, politics, honor and loyalty."
****	Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America	Farrar, Straus and Giroux	"An examination of the historical roots of contemporary criminal justice in the U.S., based on vast experience and deep knowledge of the legal system, and its often-devastating consequences for citizens and communities of color."
	Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-America World	Farrar, Straus and Giroux	"A brave and disturbing account of what it means to be an American in the world during the first decades of the 21st century."
	The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us	Doubleday	"A fascinating, nuanced and compelling account of the potentially unsettling implications surrounding sexual selection."
****	Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America	Farrar, Straus and Giroux	"A classic American story, grippingly told, of an Appalachian family struggling to retain its middle class status in the shadow of destruction wreaked by corporate fracking."
	Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore	Milkweed Editions	"A rigorously reported story about American vulnerability to rising seas, particularly disenfranchised people with limited access to the tools of rebuilding."
	In a Day's Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence against America's Most Vulnerable Workers	New Press	"An unembellished series of case studies about sexual violence exacted on mostly immigrant women in America, many toiling in a shadow economy."
****	The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care	Farrar, Straus and Giroux	"An elegant and unforgettable narrative about the brutality of illness and the capitalism of cancer care in America."
****	The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America	Metropolitan Books	"A sweeping and beautifully written book that probes the American myth of boundless expansion and provides a compelling context for thinking about the current political moment."
	Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life	Bloomsbury	"An empathetic and nuanced critique, informed by the author's decades of experience as a geriatrician, of the ways in which our society and healthcare system neglect, stereotype and mistreat the elderly."
	Solitary	Grove Atlantic	"An unflinching indictment of Louisiana's most notorious prison and the racist criminal justice system as told through an innocent man's redemptive journey faced with a life sentence in solitary confinement."
****	Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy	Atlantic Monthly Press	"A gripping account of the overthrow of the elected government of a Black-majority North Carolina city after Reconstruction that untangles a complicated set of power dynamics cutting across race, class and gender."
	Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country	Random House	"A richly-layered story with an imperfect yet memorable protagonist battling corruption, greed and intergenerational trauma when a fracking oil boom collides with reservation life in North Dakota."
	Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning	One World	"A captivating and insightful essay collection that provides an emotional consideration of racial consciousness, compelling readers to interrogate their own ideas about our common humanity."
Random House
****	Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City	Random House	"An affecting, deeply reported account of a girl who comes of age during New York City's homeless crisis—a portrait of resilience amid institutional failure that successfully merges literary narrative with policy analysis."
	Home, Land, Security: Deradicalization and the Journey Back from Extremism	One World	"An eye-opening global investigation into the deradicalization of violent extremists that impeccably balances empathy and skepticism."
Random House
	The Family Roe: An American Story	W. W. Norton	"A deeply reported account of Norma McCorvey, the Roe of Roe v. Wade, and her family, which casts fresh light on the American judicial system's half century of struggle to reckon with abortion."
****	His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice	Viking	"An intimate, riveting portrait of an ordinary man whose fatal encounter with police officers in 2020 sparked an international movement for social change, but whose humanity and complicated personal story were unknown."
****
	Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction	Viking	"An insightful and revelatory work that scientifically reconsiders natural sound as a wonder of evolution, voicing concern that noisy human progress may return us to silence."
	Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern	Riverhead Books	"A beguiling and original geopolitical account of how China's international prominence was made possible by the preservation and modernization of the Chinese language and the integration of Mandarin into global communication."
	Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation	Doubleday	"A morally urgent and elegantly rendered work drawing on history, medical research and years of reporting to document how racism infects the American healthcare system, a call to action that also offers some solutions."
****	A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy	Metropolitan Books	"A finely reported and intimate account of life under Israeli occupation of the West Bank, told through a portrait of a Palestinian father whose five-year-old son dies in a fiery school bus crash when Israeli and Palestinian rescue teams are delayed by security regulations."
	Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives	St. Martin's Press	"A powerful examination of mining operations in the Southeastern Congo that reveals a global system of modern-day slavery, and the inhumane, often deadly working conditions for the men, women and children who extract the rare metal required for smartphones, computers and electric vehicles."
	Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World	Knopf	"An unsparing account of the rapacious Alberta Sands fire, fueled by an overheated atmosphere, dry forest and omnipresent petroleum products, that consumed the town of Fort McMurray at the heart of Canada's oil industry, which brings the global crisis of carbon emissions and climate change into urgent relief."
****	To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement	Princeton University Press	"A prodigiously researched and revealing history of Soviet dissent, how it was repeatedly put down and came to life again, populated by a sprawling cast of courageous people dedicated to fighting for threatened freedoms and hard-earned rights."
	Until I Find You: Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions in Guatemala	Harvard University Press	"A focused, extensively reported study of how, between 1977 and 2007, Guatemala became the second largest source of foreign adoptions in the world, a breeding ground for racism, greed and exploitation."
	I Am on the Hit List: A Journalist’s Murder and the Rise of Autocracy in India	Penguin	"A captivating account of a crusading South Indian's murder, a mystery rich in local culture and politics that also connects to such global themes as authoritarianism, fundamentalism and other threats to free expression."

Notes

References

Wikipedia Source

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