Memoir/Autobiography
- 2006: Daniel Mendelsohn – The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
- 2005: Francine du Plessix Gray – Them: A Memoir of Parents
Biography
- 2006: Julie Phillips – James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon
- 2005: Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin – American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Biography/Autobiography
- 2004: Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan – De Kooning: An American Master
- 2003: William Taubman – Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
- 2002: Janet Browne – Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, Vol. II
- 2001: Adam Sisman – Boswell’s Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr.Johnson
- 2000: Herbert P. Bix – Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan
- 1999: Henry Wiencek – The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White
- 1998: Sylvia Nasar – A Beautiful Mind
- 1997: James Tobin – Ernie Pyle’s War: America’s Eyewitness to World War II
- 1996: Frank McCourt – Angela’s Ashes
- 1995: Robert Polito – Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson
- 1994: Mikal Gilmore – Shot in the Heart
- 1993: Edmund White – Genet
- 1992: Carol Brightman – Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World
- 1991: Philip Roth – Patrimony: A True Story
- 1990: Robert A. Caro – Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. II
- 1989: Geoffrey C. Ward – A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt
- 1988: Richard Ellman – Oscar Wilde
- 1987: Donald R. Howard – Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World
- 1986: Theodore Rosengarten – Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter
- 1985: Leon Edel – Henry James: A Life
- 1984: Joseph Frank – Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859
- 1983: Joyce Johnson – Minor Characters
