Award Winning Books About War

War has produced more prize winning books than any other subject on this site, which says something about both war and prizes. The novels and the histories are listed together on purpose, because a reader who wants to understand a war is usually served by both and rarely cares which shelf the bookshop chose.

203 books drawn from 18 prize lists, newest first.

• 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  Angel Down by Daniel Kraus
• 2025 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War by Edda L. Fields-Black
• 2025 National Book Award for Non-Fiction
  One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
• 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction
  Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan
• 2024 Edgar Award for Best Novel
  Flags on the Bayou by James Lee Burke
• 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips
• 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
  Question 7 by Richard Flanagan
• 2024 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
• 2022 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
• 2022 Edgar Award for Best Novel
  Five Decembers by James Kestrel
• 2022 The Booker Prize
  The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
• 2018 The Booker Prize
  Milkman by Anna Burns
• 2017 The Booker Prize
  Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
• 2017 The Booker Prize
  The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
• 2016 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick
• 2016 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T. J. Stiles
• 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
  East West Street by Philippe Sands
• 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Ozone Journal by Peter Balakian
• 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
• 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
• 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature
  Missing Person by Patrick Modiano
• 2014 National Book Award for Fiction
  Redeployment by Phil Klay
• 2014 Pulitzer Prize for History
  The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 by Alan Taylor
• 2014 The Booker Prize
  The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
• 2013 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall
• 2013 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
• 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss
• 2012 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
  Into the Silence by Wade Davis
• 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature
  Red Sorghum by Mo Yan
• 2012 Women's Prize for Fiction
  The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
• 2011 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis
• 2011 Newbery Medal
  Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool
• 2011 Women's Prize for Fiction
  The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht
• 2010 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  The Dead Hand by David E. Hoffman
• 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature
  The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller
• 2008 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  2666 by Roberto Bolaño
• 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature
  Desert by J. M. G. Le Clézio
• 2008 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• 2008 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  The Years of Extermination by Saul Friedländer
• 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Time and Materials by Robert Hass
• 2007 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
• 2007 Women's Prize for Fiction
  Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• 2007 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
  Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
• 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey
• 2007 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
• 2007 National Book Award for Fiction
  Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
• 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
• 2006 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  Imperial Reckoning by Caroline Elkins
• 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  March by Geraldine Brooks
• 2005 National Book Award for Fiction
  Europe Central by William T. Vollmann
• 2005 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  Ghost Wars by Steve Coll
• 2005 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• 2005 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Washington's Crossing by David Hackett Fischer
• 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  Khrushchev: The Man and His Era by William Taubman
• 2004 National Book Award for Fiction
  The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck
• 2003 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  'A Problem from Hell' by Samantha Power
• 2003 Pulitzer Prize for History
  An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943 by Rick Atkinson
• 2003 National Book Award for Fiction
  The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
• 2003 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature
  Fatelessness by Imre Kertész
• 2001 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix
• 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
• 2001 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
  The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh
• 2000 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  Embracing Defeat by John W. Dower
• 2000 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War by David M. Kennedy
• 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  Lindbergh by A. Scott Berg
• 1999 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
  Stalingrad by Antony Beevor
• 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature
  The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
• 1998 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman
• 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Alive Together: New and Selected Poems by Lisel Mueller
• 1997 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel
  Children of the Dusk by Janet Berliner and George Guthridge
• 1997 National Book Award for Fiction
  Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
• 1997 Women's Prize for Fiction
  Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
• 1996 National Book Award for Non-Fiction
  An American Requiem by James Carroll
• 1996 The Booker Prize
  Last Orders by Graham Swift
• 1995 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  Beach Music by Pat Conroy
• 1995 Pulitzer Prize for History
  No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin
• 1995 The Booker Prize
  The Ghost Road by Pat Barker
• 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems by Yusef Komunyakaa
• 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
• 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  Truman by David McCullough
• 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  Fortunate Son: The Autobiography of Lewis B. Puller Jr. by Lewis B. Puller Jr.
• 1992 The Booker Prize
  The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
• 1992 Pulitzer Prize for History
  The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties by Mark E. Neely, Jr.
• 1990 Pulitzer Prize for History
  In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines by Stanley Karnow
• 1990 Newbery Medal
  Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
• 1990 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
• 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  The World Doesn't End by Charles Simic
• 1989 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan
• 1989 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson
• 1989 National Book Award for Non-Fiction
  From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas L. Friedman
• 1989 Nebula Award for Best Novel
  The Healer's War by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
• 1988 National Book Award for Non-Fiction
  A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan
• 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems by William Meredith
• 1988 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
• 1987 The Booker Prize
  Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
• 1987 National Book Award for Fiction
  Paco's Story by Larry Heinemann
• 1986 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
• 1985 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• 1985 Nobel Prize in Literature
  The Flanders Road by Claude Simon
• 1985 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  The Good War by Studs Terkel
• 1983 The Booker Prize
  Life & Times of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee
• 1982 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh
• 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  Grant: A Biography by William S. McFeely
• 1982 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Mary Chesnut's Civil War by C. Vann Woodward
• 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature
  One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
• 1982 The Booker Prize
  Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
• 1980 National Book Award for Fiction
  Sophie's Choice by William Styron
• 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews by Leonard Baker
• 1979 Edgar Award for Best Novel
  Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett
• 1979 National Book Award for Fiction
  Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien
• 1979 Nobel Prize in Literature
  The Axion Esti by Odysseus Elytis
• 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Collected Poems by Howard Nemerov
• 1978 Nobel Prize in Literature
  The Family Moskat by Isaac Bashevis Singer
• 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence by John E. Mack
• 1977 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  Dispatches by Michael Herr
• 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  Edith Wharton: A Biography by R. W. B. Lewis
• 1976 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
• 1975 National Book Award for Fiction
  Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone
• 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
• 1974 National Book Award for Fiction
  Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
• 1974 Nobel Prize in Literature
  Return to Ithaca by Eyvind Johnson
• 1973 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  Fire in the Lake by Frances FitzGerald
• 1973 The Booker Prize
  The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell
• 1972 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45 by Barbara W. Tuchman
• 1971 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom by James MacGregor Burns
• 1971 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  The Rising Sun by John Toland
• 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
• 1969 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• 1969 The Booker Prize
  Something to Answer For by P. H. Newby
• 1969 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer
• 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  The Hard Hours by Anthony Hecht
• 1968 Pulitzer Prize for History
  The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn
• 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature
  O the Chimneys by Nelly Sachs
• 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Selected Poems by Richard Eberhart
• 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature
  And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov
• 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  At the End of the Open Road by Louis Simpson
• 1963 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction
  The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman
• 1963 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
• 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  Poems by Alan Dugan
• 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
• 1961 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference by Herbert Feis
• 1961 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• 1961 Nobel Prize in Literature
  The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andrić
• 1961 National Book Award for Non-Fiction
  The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
• 1960 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  John Paul Jones by Samuel Eliot Morison
• 1960 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
• 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature
  Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
• 1958 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  George Washington, Vols. I-VII by Douglas Southall Freeman, John Alexander Carroll, and Mary Wells Ashworth
• 1958 Hugo Award for Best Novel
  The Big Time by Fritz Leiber
• 1957 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Russia Leaves the War: Soviet-American Relations, 1917–1920 by George F. Kennan
• 1956 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
• 1955 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  A Fable by William Faulkner
• 1955 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  The Quiet American by Graham Greene
• 1954 Pulitzer Prize for History
  A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton
• 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature
  The Second World War by Winston Churchill
• 1952 National Book Award for Fiction
  From Here to Eternity by James Jones
• 1952 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
• 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens
• 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  Roosevelt and Hopkins by Robert E. Sherwood
• 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener
• 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  The Age of Anxiety by W. H. Auden
• 1948 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
• 1947 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Scientists Against Time by James Phinney Baxter III
• 1947 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
• 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  A Bell for Adano by John Hersey
• 1945 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Unfinished Business by Stephen Bonsal
• 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  V-Letter and Other Poems by Karl Shapiro
• 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair
• 1943 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Paul Revere and the World He Lived In by Esther Forbes
• 1942 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865 by Margaret Leech
• 1940 Pulitzer Prize for History
  Abraham Lincoln: The War Years by Carl Sandburg
• 1940 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
• 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters, Vols. VII and VIII by Ray Stannard Baker
• 1939 Nobel Prize in Literature
  Meek Heritage by Frans Eemil Sillanpää
• 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• 1937 Nobel Prize in Literature
  The Thibaults by Roger Martin du Gard
• 1935 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  R. E. Lee by Douglas S. Freeman
• 1933 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain
• 1932 Pulitzer Prize for History
  My Experiences in the World War by John J. Pershing
• 1932 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography by Henry F. Pringle
• 1931 Pulitzer Prize for History
  The Coming of the War, 1914 by Bernadotte E. Schmitt
• 1930 Pulitzer Prize for History
  The War of Independence by Claude H. Van Tyne
• 1929 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
• 1929 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
• 1929 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  John Brown's Body by Stephen Vincent Benét
• 1929 Pulitzer Prize for History
  The Organization and Administration of the Union Army, 1861–1865 by Fred Albert Shannon
• 1928 Newbery Medal
  Gay Neck, the Story of a Pigeon by Dhan Gopal Mukerji
• 1926 Pulitzer Prize for History
  A History of the United States, Vol. VI: The War for Southern Independence (1849–1865) by Edward Channing
• 1925 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature
  Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw
• 1923 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  One of Ours by Willa Cather
• 1923 Pulitzer Prize for Biography
  The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page by Burton J. Hendrick
• 1921 Pulitzer Prize for History
  The Victory at Sea by William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick
• 1921 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos
• 1920 Pulitzer Prize for History
  The War with Mexico by Justin H. Smith
• 1919 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  The Old Road to Paradise by Margaret Widdemer
• 1918 Pulitzer Prize for History
  A History of the Civil War, 1861–1865 by James Ford Rhodes
• 1918 Best Books That Never Won a Prize
  The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
• 1916 Nobel Prize in Literature
  The Charles Men by Verner von Heidenstam
• 1895 Classic Books
  The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
• 1869 Classic Books
  War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• 1826 Classic Books
  The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper