- 2006: Lawrence Weschler – Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences
- 2005: William Logan – The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin
- 2004: Patrick Neate – Where You’re At: Notes From the Frontline of a Hip-Hop Planet
- 2003: Rebecca Solnit – River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West
- 2002: William H. Gass – Tests of Time
- 2001: Martin Amis – The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews, 1971-2000
- 2000: Cynthia Ozick – Quarrel & Quandary
- 1999: Jorge Luis Borges – Selected Non-Fictions
- 1998: Gary Giddins – Visions of Jazz: The First Century
- 1997: Mario Vargas Llosa – Making Waves
- 1996: William H. Gass – Finding a Form
- 1995: Robert Darnton – The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France
- 1994: Gerald Early – The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture
- 1993: John Dizikes – Opera in America: A Cultural History
- 1992: Garry Wills – Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America
- 1991: Lawrence L. Langer – Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory
- 1990: Arthur C. Danto – Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present
- 1989: John Clive – Not by Fact Alone: Essays on the Writing and Reading of History
- 1988: Clifford Geertz – Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author
- 1987: Edwin Denby – Dance Writings
- 1986: Edward Hirsch – Wild Gratitude
- 1985: William H. Gass – Habitations of the Word: Essays
- 1984: Robert Hass – Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry
- 1983: John Updike – Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism
- 1982: Gore Vidal – The Second American Revolution and Other Essays
- 1981: Virgil Thomson – A Virgil Thomson Reader
- 1980: Helen Vendler – Part of Nature, Part of Us: Modern American Poets
- 1979: Elaine Pagels – The Gnostic Gospels
- 1978: Meyer Schapiro – Modern Art: 19th and 20th Centuries (Selected Papers, Volume 2)
- 1977: Susan Sontag – On Photography
- 1976: Bruno Bettelheim – The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance and Importance of Fairy Tales
- 1975: Paul Fussell – The Great War and Modern Memory
National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry
- 2006: Troy Jollimore – Tom Thomson in Purgatory
- 2005: Jack Gilbert – Refusing Heaven
- 2004: Adrienne Rich – The School Among the Ruins
- 2003: Susan Stewart – Columbarium
- 2002: B.H. Fairchild – Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest
- 2001: Albert Goldbarth – Saving Lives
- 2000: Judy Jordan – Carolina Ghost Woods
- 1999: Ruth Stone – Ordinary Words
- 1998: Marie Ponsot – The Bird Catcher
- 1997: Charles Wright – Black Zodiac
- 1996: Robert Hass – Sun Under Wood
- 1995: William Matthews – Time and Money
- 1994: Mark Rudman – Rider
- 1993: Mark Doty – My Alexandria
- 1992: Hayden Carruth – Collected Shorter Poems 1946-1991
- 1991: Albert Goldbarth – Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology
- 1990: Amy Gerstler – Bitter Angel
- 1989: Rodney Jones – Transparent Gestures
- 1988: Donald Hall – That One Day
- 1987: C.K. Williams – Flesh and Blood
- 1986: Edward Hirsch – Wild Gratitude
- 1985: Louise Gluck – The Triumph of Achilles
- 1984: Sharon Olds – The Dead and the Living
- 1983: James Merrill – The Changing Light at Sandover
- 1982: Katha Pollitt – Antarctic Traveler
- 1981: A.R. Ammons – A Coast of Trees
- 1980: Frederick Seidel – Sunrise
- 1979: Philip Levine – Ashes: Poems New and Old and 7 Years From Somewhere
- 1978: L. E. Sissman – Hello, Darkness: The Collected Poems of L. E. Sissman
- 1977: Robert Lowell – Day by Day
- 1976: Elizabeth Bishop – Geography III
- 1975: John Ashberry – Self-Portrait in A Convex Mirror
National Book Critics Circle Awards – Biography and Autobiography
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
National Book Critics Circle Award – General Nonfiction
- 2006: Simon Schama – Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution
- 2005: Svetlana Alexievich – Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
- 2004: Diarmaid MacCulloch – The Reformation: A History
- 2003: Paul Hendrickson – Sons of Mississippi
- 2002: Samantha Power – A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide
- 2001: Nicholson Baker – Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper
- 2000: Ted Conover – Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing
- 1999: Jonathan Weiner – Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior
- 1998: Philip Gourevitch – We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families
- 1997: Anne Fadiman – The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
- 1996: Jonathan Raban – Bad Land: An American Romance
- 1995: Jonathan Harr – A Civil Action
- 1994: Lynn H. Nicholas – The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War
- 1993: Alan Lomax – The Land Where the Blues Began
- 1992: Norman Maclean – Young Men and Fire
- 1991: Susan Faludi – Backlash: The Undeclared War Against America Women
- 1990: Shelby Steele – The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America
- 1989: Michael Dorris – The Broken Cord
- 1988: Taylor Branch – Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63,
- 1987: Richard Rhodes – The Making of the Atomic Bomb
- 1986: John W. Dower – War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War
- 1985: J. Anthony Lukas – Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families
- 1984: Freeman Dyson – Weapons and Hope
- 1983: Seymour M. Hersh – The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House
- 1982: Robert Caro – The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
- 1981: Stephen Jay Gould – The Mismeasure of Man
- 1980: Ronald Steel – Walter Lippmann and the American Century
- 1979: Telford Taylor – Munich: The Price of Peace
- 1978: Maureen Howard – Facts of Life
- 1977: Walter Jackson Bate – Samuel Johnson
- 1976: Maxine Hong Kingston – The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts
- 1975: R. W. B. Lewis – Edith Wharton: A Biography
National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
2007: Junot Diaz – The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
2006: Kiran Desai – The Inheritance of Loss
2005: E.L. Doctorow – The March
2004: Marilynne Robinson – Gilead
2003: Edward P. Jones – The Known World
2002: Ian McEwan – Atonement
2001: W.G. Sebald – Austerlitz
2000: Jim Crace – Being Dead
1999: Jonathan Lethem – Motherless Brooklyn
1998: Alice Munro – The Love of a Good Woman
1997: Penelope Fitzgerald – The Blue Flower
1996: Gina Berriault – Women in Their Beds
1995: Stanley Elkin – Mrs. Ted Bliss
1994: Carol Shields – The Stone Diaries
1993: Ernest J. Gaines – A Lesson Before Dying
1992: Cormac McCarthy – All the Pretty Horses
1991: Jane Smiley – A Thousand Acres
1990: John Updike – Rabbit at Rest
1989: E.L. Doctorow – Billy Bathgate
1988: Bharati Mukherjee – The Middleman and Other Stories
1987: Philip Roth – The Counterlife
1986: Reynolds Price – Kate Vaiden
1985: Anne Tyler – The Accidental Tourist
1984: Louise Erdrich – Love Medicine
1983: William Kennedy – Ironweed
1982: Stanley Elkin – George Mills
1981: John Updike – Rabbit Is Rich
1980: Shirley Hazzard – The Transit Of Venus
1979: Thomas Flanagan – The Year of the French
1978: John Cheever – The Stories of John Cheever
1977: Toni Morrison – Song Of Solomon
1976: John Gardner – October Light
1975: E.L. Doctorow – Ragtime
