This prize has been awarded annually since 1950 by the American Association of Publishers.
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J. Anthony Lukas (born 1933, died 1997)
American journalist.
- 1985 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families
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Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (born 1917)
American historian.
- Two-time National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, in 1966 for A Thousand Days: JFK in the White House and in 1979 for Robert Kennedy and His Times
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Bernard A. De Voto (born 1897, died 1955)
American historian.
- 1953 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for Course of Empire
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Bruce Catton (born 1899, died 1978)
American historian of the Civil War.
- 1954 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for A Stillness at Appomattox
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Gore Vidal (born 1925)
American novelist and essayist.
- 1993 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for United States: Essays 1952-1992
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Joseph P. Lash (born 1909, died 1987)
American biographer.
- 1972 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for Eleanor and Franklin
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Lewis Mumford (born 1895, died 1990)
American architect, sociologist and writer.
- 1962 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for The City in History
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Norman Mailer (born 1923)
American novelist.
- 1969 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for The Armies of the Night
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Richard Ellmann
- 1960 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for James Joyce
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Richard Rhodes (born 1937)
American historian.
- 1987 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for The Making of the Atom Bomb
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Thomas L. Friedman
American journalist.
- 1989 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for From Beirut to Jerusalem
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Tom Wolfe (born 1931)
American journalist and novelist.
- 1980 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for The Right Stuff
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Tracy Kidder
- 1982 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for The Soul of a New Machine
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Walter Jackson Bate (born 1918)
American literary critic and biographer.
- 1978 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for Samuel Johnson
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William L. Shirer
American historian.
- 1961 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
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Ralph L. Rusk
- 1950 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Newton Arvin
- 1951 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for Herman Melville
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Joseph Wood Krutch (born 1893, died 1970)
American essayist and critic.
- 1955 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for The Measure of Man
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Herbert Kubly (born 1915, died 1996)
American journalist and novelist.
- 1956 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for An American in Italy
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George F. Kennan (born 1904)
American diplomat and historian.
- 1957 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for Russia Leaves the War
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J. Christopher Herold
- 1959 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for Mistress to an Age
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Leon Edel (born 1907, died 1997)
American biographer.
- 1963 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for Henry James, Volume II: The Conquest of London, 1870-1881, and Volume III: The Middle Years, 1881-1895
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Louis Fisher
- 1965 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for The Life of Lenin
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Justin Kaplan (born 1925)
American biographer and scholar.
- 1967 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain
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Jonathan Kozol (born 1936)
American writer and educator.
- 1968 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for Death at an Early Age
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James MacGregor Burns (born 1918)
American historian and political scientist.
- 1971 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom
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Richard B. Sewall
- 1975 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for The Life of Emily Dickinson
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Paul Fussell (born 1924)
American literary critic and historian.
- 1976 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for The Great War and Modern Memory
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Bruno Bettelheim (born 1903, died 1990)
Austrian-born American psychologist.
- 1977 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales
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Fox Butterfield
- 1983 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for China: Alive in the Bitter Sea
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Robert V. Remini
- 1984 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845, vol. 5
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Barry Lopez (born 1945)
American nature writer.
- 1986 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for Arctic Dreams
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Neil Sheehan (born 1936)
American journalist.
- 1988 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
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Ron Chernow
- 1990 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance
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Orlando Patterson (born 1940)
Jamaican-born American sociologist.
- 1991 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for Freedom
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Paul Monette (born 1945, died 1995)
American writer.
- 1992 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for Becoming a Man: Half a Life
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Sherwin B. Nuland
- 1994 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for How We Die: Reflections on Life''s Final Chapter
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Lewis Thomas (born 1913)
American essayist and physician.
- 1975 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for The Lives of a Cell
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Joseph J. Ellis
American historian.
- 1997 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
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James Carroll
American writer and former priest.
- 1996 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction, for An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us
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Edward Ball
American journalist
- 1998 National Book Award winner for Slaves In the Family
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Nathaniel Philbrick
- 2000 National Book Award winner for In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
