Fond Books
Archive Collection

Pulitzer Prize General Non Fiction Winners

Jump to:
2020s 2010s 2000s 1990s 1980s 1970s 1960s
Year Title & Author Historical Context
2025 To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement by Benjamin Nathans Drawing on KGB interrogation records, diaries, memoirs, and interviews, Nathans reveals how dissidents used Soviet law to challenge state power. Th...
2024 A Day in the Life of Abed Salama by Nathan Thrall Thrall uses a single tragedy to illustrate the "micro-geography" of the occupation, where even an ambulance's route is dictated by checkpoints and ...
2023 His Name Is George Floyd by Robert Samuels & Toluse Olorunnipa The authors used Floyd's life to map the entire experience of being Black in America, from failing schools and housing to the criminal justice system.
2022 Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott Based on a massive New York Times series; Elliott's work is a masterclass in "immersion" journalism, following one subject from childhood to adulth...
2021 Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy by David Zucchino Zucchino untangled a complicated set of power dynamics cutting across race, class, and gender, exposing a massacre and coup that had been systemati...
2020 The Undying by Anne Boyer Shared the 2020 prize. Boyer critiques the "pink ribbon" culture of breast cancer, focusing instead on the grueling reality of treatment and class.
2020 The End of the Myth by Greg Grandin Grandin argues that for 200 years, the "frontier" acted as a safety valve for American tensions; without it, the nation has turned inward on itself.
2019 Amity and Prosperity by Eliza Griswold The book is a microcosm of the modern American divide, focusing on the personal health of children versus the economic survival of their parents.
2018 Locking Up Our Own by James Forman Jr. Forman Jr., a former public defender, provides a nuanced "internal" history of how the war on drugs was supported by those it ultimately hurt most.
2017 Evicted by Matthew Desmond Desmond lived in a trailer park and a rooming house to gather data; his book proved that eviction is a cause, not just a result, of poverty.
2016 Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick Warrick traced the movement back to a single Jordanian thug, showing how his ideology filled the vacuum left by the collapse of the Iraqi state.
2015 The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert Kolbert traveled the world to show that we are currently losing species at a rate unprecedented in millions of years.
2014 Toms River by Dan Fagin Fagin combined "pavement-pounding" journalism with complex epidemiology to show how hard it is to prove a "cancer cluster" in a court of law.
2013 Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King King exposed the "Jim Crow" legal system of Florida, which was often more brutal and lawless than the more famous cases in Alabama or Mississippi.
2012 The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt Greenblatt won both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award for this work, which argues that a single poem changed the course of Western thought.
2011 The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee Mukherjee, an oncologist, turned a complex medical subject into a bestseller by treating the disease as a living, evolving "character" in human his...
2010 The Dead Hand by David E. Hoffman The book reads like a techno-thriller but is based on declassified documents regarding the terrifying close calls of the 1980s.
2009 Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon Blackmon proved that "slavery" didn't end with the Emancipation Proclamation but was legally re-branded to provide free labor for Southern industries.
2008 The Years of Extermination by Saul Friedländer Friedländer insisted on integrating the voices of the victims through their diaries and letters, rather than just telling the story from the killer...
2007 The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright Wright interviewed hundreds of sources across the Middle East; the book is prized for its "novelistic" pacing and deep psychological profiles.
2006 Imperial Reckoning by Caroline Elkins Elkins discovered that the British government had systematically destroyed or hidden the records of these camps to preserve their "civilized" reput...
2005 Ghost Wars by Steve Coll Coll provides the "prehistory" of 9/11, showing how the U.S. helped create the very forces that would later turn against it.
2004 Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum Applebaum utilized newly opened Soviet archives to prove that the Gulag was not just a series of prisons but a central pillar of the Soviet economy.
2003 'A Problem from Hell' by Samantha Power Power was a war correspondent; her book influenced a generation of foreign policy "interventionists" and led to her eventually serving as U.S. Amba...
2002 Carry Me Home by Diane McWhorter McWhorter grew up in Birmingham's white elite; her book is a "detective story" where she discovers her own father's involvement with the segregatio...
2001 Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix Bix used newly available Japanese diaries and documents to dismantle the "innocent emperor" narrative created during the post-WWII American occupat...
2000 Embracing Defeat by John W. Dower Dower focused on the "lower levels" of society—the black markets, the schools, and the housewives—rather than just the military generals.
1999 Annals of the Former World by John McPhee McPhee spent 20 years on this project; he is credited with making "deep time" and plate tectonics feel intimate and understandable to lay readers.
1998 Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond Diamond's "geographic determinism" theory became a global phenomenon, though it sparked intense debate among historians regarding human agency.
1997 Ashes to Ashes by Richard Kluger At nearly 800 pages, it is the definitive record of how the tobacco companies knew about the health risks of smoking for decades while denying them.
1996 The Haunted Land by Tina Rosenberg Rosenberg explored the moral "gray zones" of collaboration, asking if a nation can ever truly move forward without punishing its own citizens.
1995 The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner The book proved to a wide audience that evolution isn't just something that happened in the past, but a visible, ongoing process.
1994 Lenin's Tomb by David Remnick Remnick was a reporter for the Washington Post in Moscow; the book is prized for its "boots-on-the-ground" view of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
1993 Lincoln at Gettysburg by Garry Wills Wills argues that Lincoln used the speech to shift the American focus from "states' rights" to "equality," effectively re-founding the nation.
1992 The Prize by Daniel Yergin The book was published just as the Gulf War began, making it an immediate bestseller for anyone trying to understand the geopolitics of the Middle ...
1991 The Ants by Bert Hölldobler & E.O. Wilson This is the only time a purely "biological reference" book won the prize. It weighs over 7 pounds and contains nearly every fact known about ants a...
1990 And Their Children After Them by Dale Maharidge & Michael Williamson The book won for exposing the cycle of poverty that persisted in the South, despite the economic boom of the mid-20th century.
1989 A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan Sheehan spent 16 years researching and writing this book. It won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and is considered one of the ...
1988 The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes Rhodes managed to make the physics of nuclear fission understandable while maintaining the pacing of a high-stakes thriller.
1987 Arab and Jew by David K. Shipler Shipler focused on the "human" dimension—school textbooks, jokes, and shared traumas—to explain why a political peace remains so elusive.
1986 Move Your Shadow by Joseph Lelyveld A rare tie for 1986. Lelyveld's title refers to a phrase from a golf caddy, illustrating the casual but deep-seated racism of the era.
1986 Common Ground by J. Anthony Lukas Lukas spent seven years on the book; it is famously used in journalism schools to teach how to weave complex legal history into a deeply personal n...
1985 The Good War by Studs Terkel Terkel was the master of the "portable tape recorder"; he used thousands of hours of interviews to strip away the myths of WWII and find the "human...
1984 The Social Transformation of American Medicine by Paul Starr Starr explored why the U.S. became the only industrialized nation without a national healthcare system, focusing on the "sovereignty" of the doctor...
1983 Is There No Place on Earth for Me? by Susan Sheehan Sheehan utilized a "deep immersion" style of journalism, spending hundreds of hours with her subject to expose the failures of deinstitutionalization.
1982 The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder A landmark in "tech journalism," it captures the high-pressure, obsessive culture of the early computer industry before the rise of the personal PC.
1981 Fin-de-Siècle Vienna by Carl E. Schorske Schorske used the physical layout of Vienna's Ringstrasse to illustrate the "crisis of the liberal ego" that preceded the rise of psychoanalysis an...
1980 Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter A cult classic of the 20th century; the book uses dialogues between Achilles and the Tortoise to explain complex concepts in computer science and AI.
1979 On Human Nature by Edward O. Wilson Wilson's work was highly controversial at the time, as it challenged the prevailing view that human behavior was entirely a "blank slate" shaped by...
1978 The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan This win made Sagan a global celebrity; the book popularized the "triune brain" model and helped spark the 1980s public fascination with space and ...
1977 Beautiful Swimmers by William W. Warner The book is celebrated as a masterpiece of "regional natural history," blending marine biology with the social anthropology of the bay's fishing co...
1976 Why Survive? Being Old in America by Robert N. Butler Butler was a gerontologist who coined the term "ageism." His win brought national attention to the needs of a rapidly aging American population.
1975 Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard Often compared to Thoreau's "Walden," Dillard's prose is noted for its "theological" intensity and its scientific curiosity regarding the "extravag...
1974 The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker A posthumous win; Becker died of cancer just months before the award. The book remains a foundational text in existential psychology and "Terror Ma...
1973 Fire in the Lake by Frances FitzGerald A tie winner in 1973. One of the most influential books on the Vietnam War; it won the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, and the Bancroft Prize fo...
1973 Children of Crisis, Volumes II and III by Robert Coles Volumes II and III of Coles's landmark five-volume series won the Pulitzer. Coles was a child psychiatrist who spent years interviewing and observi...
1972 Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45 by Barbara W. Tuchman This was Tuchman's second Pulitzer; she used Stilwell's personal diaries to expose the deep cultural misunderstandings between the U.S. and the Chi...
1971 The Rising Sun by John Toland Toland was the first Western historian to be granted extensive interviews with former Japanese military and political leaders, providing a rare "vi...
1970 Gandhi's Truth by Erik H. Erikson Erikson invented the term "identity crisis." In this book, he applied psychoanalysis to history (psychohistory) to understand how Gandhi's personal...
1969 The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer A tie winner. Mailer wrote himself into the story as the protagonist "Mailer," blurring the lines between fiction and reportage to capture the "inn...
1969 So Human an Animal by René Dubos A tie winner. Dubos was a pioneer of the environmental movement; he is famous for coining the phrase "Think globally, act locally."
1968 Rousseau and Revolution by Will and Ariel Durant The Durants spent 40 years on their 11-volume series. This win recognized their ability to make massive sweeps of history accessible to the average...
1967 The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture by David Brion Davis Davis was a founding father of modern slavery studies; his work shifted the focus from the "economics" of slavery to the moral and religious tensio...
1966 Wandering Through Winter by Edwin Way Teale The final volume in Teale's legendary four-season series. He traveled in a station wagon across the U.S. to document a season many Americans feared...
1965 O Strange New World by Howard Mumford Jones Jones challenged the "frontier" myth, arguing that American identity was a complex "translation" of European Renaissance and Enlightenment ideals r...
1964 Anti-intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter Written as a response to the McCarthyism of the 1950s, Hofstadter sought to explain why American democracy often views "experts" and "eggheads" wit...
1963 The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman President Kennedy was so moved by the book's warning on "miscalculation" that he distributed copies to his cabinet during the Cuban Missile Crisis ...
1962 The Making of the President 1960 by Theodore H. White The first winner of the General Nonfiction Pulitzer. White's unprecedented access to JFK's campaign created the modern "fly-on-the-wall" style of p...