Award Winning Science and Nature Books

The Royal Society Science Book Prize exists to reward science writing that a reader with no training can follow, and its winners anchor this page. With them is the writing on evolution, climate and the natural world that won literary and non fiction prizes, which is where much of the best nature writing actually lands.

129 books drawn from 17 prize lists, newest first.

• 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Ars Poeticas by Juliana Spahr
• 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life by Jason Roberts
• 2025 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  Our Brains, Our Selves: What a Neurologist's Patients Taught Him About the Brain by Masud Husain
• 2024 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
• 2024 The Booker Prize
  Orbital by Samantha Harvey
• 2023 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  An Immense World by Ed Yong
• 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
  Fire Weather by John Vaillant
• 2022 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth by Henry Gee
• 2021 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake
• 2020 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  Explaining Humans by Camilla Pang
• 2019 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  Amity and Prosperity by Eliza Griswold
• 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Be With by Forrest Gander
• 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
• 2019 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
• 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  The Overstory by Richard Powers
• 2018 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
  Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy by Serhii Plokhy
• 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature
  Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
• 2018 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  Inventing Ourselves by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore
• 2018 Pulitzer Prize for History
  The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea by Jack E. Davis
• 2018 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
• 2017 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  Testosterone Rex by Cordelia Fine
• 2016 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf
• 2015 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  Adventures in the Anthropocene by Gaia Vince
• 2015 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
  NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman
• 2015 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
• 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
• 2014 Nebula Award for Best Novel
  Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
• 2014 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
  H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
• 2014 Caldecott Medal
  Locomotive by Brian Floca
• 2014 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik
• 2014 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  Toms River by Dan Fagin
• 2013 Newbery Medal
  The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate
• 2013 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  The Particle at the End of the Universe by Sean Carroll
• 2012 Nebula Award for Best Novel
  2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
• 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith
• 2012 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  The Information by James Gleick
• 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
• 2011 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  The Wavewatcher's Companion by Gavin Pretor-Pinney
• 2010 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  Life Ascending by Nick Lane
• 2010 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
• 2009 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
  Leviathan or, The Whale by Philip Hoare
• 2009 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
• 2008 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  Six Degrees by Mark Lynas
• 2007 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
• 2007 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
• 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
• 2006 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  Electric Universe by David Bodanis
• 2006 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
• 2006 National Book Award for Fiction
  The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
• 2006 National Book Award for Non-Fiction
  The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
• 2005 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  Critical Mass by Philip Ball
• 2004 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
• 2003 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer
• 2003 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  Right Hand, Left Hand by Chris McManus
• 2002 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking
• 2001 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  Mapping the Deep by Robert Kunzig
• 2000 Nebula Award for Best Novel
  Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
• 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature
  Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian
• 2000 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene
• 1999 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  Annals of the Former World by John McPhee
• 1999 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  The Man Who Loved Only Numbers by Paul Hoffman
• 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Black Zodiac by Charles Wright
• 1998 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
• 1997 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
• 1997 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
• 1997 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  The Wisdom of the Bones by Alan Walker and Pat Shipman
• 1996 National Book Award for Fiction
  Ship Fever and Other Stories by Andrea Barrett
• 1995 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner
• 1995 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  The Consumer's Good Chemical Guide by John Emsley
• 1994 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
• 1994 National Book Award for Non-Fiction
  How We Die by Sherwin B. Nuland
• 1994 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  The Language of the Genes by Steve Jones
• 1993 Nebula Award for Best Novel
  Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
• 1993 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  The Making of Memory by Steven Rose
• 1992 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond
• 1991 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  The Ants by Bert Hölldobler & E.O. Wilson
• 1991 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould
• 1990 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose
• 1989 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  Bones of Contention by Roger Lewin
• 1988 Royal Society Science Book Prize
  Living with Risk by British Medical Association Board of Science
• 1988 Pulitzer Prize for History
  The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876 by Robert V. Bruce
• 1988 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
• 1988 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  The Uplift War by David Brin
• 1986 Pulitzer Prize for History
  ...the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age by Walter A. McDougall
• 1986 National Book Award for Non-Fiction
  Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez
• 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  American Primitive by Mary Oliver
• 1984 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  Startide Rising by David Brin
• 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Selected Poems by Galway Kinnell
• 1982 Nebula Award for Best Novel
  No Enemy But Time by Michael Bishop
• 1982 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
• 1980 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter
• 1980 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke
• 1980 National Book Award for Non-Fiction
  The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
• 1980 Nebula Award for Best Novel
  Timescape by Gregory Benford
• 1979 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  On Human Nature by Edward O. Wilson
• 1979 National Book Award for Non-Fiction
  The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen
• 1978 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan
• 1977 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  Beautiful Swimmers by William W. Warner
• 1977 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm
• 1976 Nebula Award for Best Novel
  Man Plus by Frederik Pohl
• 1976 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
• 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
• 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Turtle Island by Gary Snyder
• 1974 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
• 1973 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
• 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Up Country by Maxine Kumin
• 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Collected Poems by James Wright
• 1971 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  Ringworld by Larry Niven
• 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  The Carrier of Ladders by W. S. Merwin
• 1969 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  So Human an Animal by René Dubos
• 1969 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
• 1967 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West by William H. Goetzmann
• 1966 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  Wandering Through Winter by Edwin Way Teale
• 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Things of This World by Richard Wilbur
• 1956 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Poems: North & South - A Cold Spring by Elizabeth Bishop
• 1955 National Book Award for Non-Fiction
  The Measure of Man by Joseph Wood Krutch
• 1954 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  The Waking by Theodore Roethke
• 1952 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Collected Poems by Marianne Moore
• 1952 National Book Award for Non-Fiction
  The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson
• 1947 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Scientists Against Time by James Phinney Baxter III
• 1946 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir by Linnie Marsh Wolfe
• 1944 Nobel Prize in Literature
  The Long Journey by Johannes V. Jensen
• 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature
  Creative Evolution by Henri Bergson
• 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
• 1924 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  From Immigrant to Inventor by Michael I. Pupin
• 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature
  Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun
• 1918 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed by William Cabell Bruce
• 1909 Nobel Prize in Literature
  The Wonderful Adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlöf
• 1854 Classic Books
  Walden by Henry David Thoreau