The Awards
Innovator's | Robert Kirsch | Art Seidenbaum | Biography | Christopher Isherwood | Current Interest
Fiction | Graphic Novel/Comics | History | Mystery/Thriller | Poetry | Science and Technology | Young Adult
L.A. Times Book Prizes honoring 2019 recipients will take place on Friday, April 17th, 7PM.
• Tickets Coming Soon! •
Innovator’s Award
(Award Added in 2009)
2019
WriteGirl
2018
Library of America
2017
Glory Edim
2016
Ruebén Martinez
2015
James Patterson
2014
LeVar Burton
2013
John Green
2012
Margaret Atwood
2011
Figment
2010
Powell’s Books, Portland, OR
2009
Dave Eggers
The Robert Kirsch Award
2018
Terry Tempest Williams
2017
John Rechy
2016
Thomas McGuane
2015
Juan Felipe Herrera
2014
TC Boyle
2013
Susan Straight
2012
Kevin Starr
2011
Rudolfo Anaya
2010
Beverly Cleary
2009
Evan S. Connell
2008
Robert Alter
2007
Maxine Hong Kingston
2006
William Kittredge
2005
Joan Didion
2004
Tony Hillerman
2003
Ishmael Reed
2002
Larry McMurtry
2001
Tillie Olsen
2000
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
1999
Ursula K. Le Guin
1998
John Sanford
1997
Ray Bradbury
1996
Gary Snyder
1995
Stephen J. Pyne
1994
Brian Moore
1993
Carolyn See
1992
Diane Johnson
1991
Ken Kesey
1990
Czeslaw Milosz
1989
Karl Shapiro
1988
Thom Gunn
1987
Paul Horgan
1986
Kay Boyle
1985
Janet Lewis
1984
Christopher Isherwood
1983
M.F.K. Fisher
1982
Ross Macdonald
1981
Wright Morris
1980
Wallace Stegner
The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose
(Award Added in 2016)
2019
Emily Bernard / Black is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine (Knopf)
2018
Kiese Laymon / Heavy: An American Memoir (Scribner)
2017
Benjamin Taylor/ The Hue and Cry at Our House: A Year Remembered (Penguin Books)
2016
Wesley Lowery / They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement (Little, Brown and Company)
The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
(Award Added in 1991)
2018
Nafissa Thompson-Spires / Heads of the Colored People (Atria/37 Ink)
2017
Jenny Zhang / Sour Heart (Lenny / Random House)
2016
Nathan Hill / The Nix (Alfred A. Knopf)
2015
Chigozie Obioma / The Fishermen (Little, Brown and Company)
2014
Valeria Luiselli (Christina MacSweeney, translation) / Faces in the Crowd (Coffee House Press)
2013
Maggie Shipsteadl / Seating Arrangements (Knopf)
2012
Maggie Shipstead / Seating Arrangements (Knopf)
2011
Ismet Prcic / Shards (Black Cat, Grove/Atlantic)
2010
Peter Bognanni / The House of Tomorrow (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam)
2009
Philipp Meyer / American Rust (Spiegel & Grau)
2008
Zoë Ferraris / Finding Nouf (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
2007
Dinaw Mengestu / The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Riverhead Books)
2006
Alice Greenway / White Ghost Girls (Black Cat / Grove/Atlantic)
2005
Uzodinma Iweala / Beasts of No Nation: A Novel (HarperCollins)
2004
Lorraine Adams / Harbor (Alfred A. Knopf)
2003
Mark Haddon / The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Doubleday)
2002
Arthur Phillips / Prague: A Novel (Random House)
2001
Rachel Seiffert / The Dark Room (Pantheon Books)
2000
Pankaj Mishra / The Romantics: A Novel (Random House)
1999
Elizabeth Strout / Amy and Isabelle: A Novel (Random House)
1998
C.S. Godshalk / Kalimantaan (Henry Holt)
1997
Carolyn Ferrell / Don’t Erase Me: Stories (Houghton Mifflin)
1996
Mark Behr / The Smell of Apples (St. Martin’s)
1995
Mark Merlis / American Studies (Houghton Mifflin)
1994
Martin M. Šimecka / The Year of the Frog (Louisiana State University Press)
1993
Paul Kafka / Love (Enter) (Houghton Mifflin)
1992
Darryl Pinckney / High Cotton (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
1991
David Wong Louie / Pangs of Love (Alfred A. Knopf)
Biography
2018
David W. Blight / Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (Simon & Schuster)
2017
Laura Dassow Walls / Henry David Thoreau: A Life (University of Chicago Press)
2016
Volker Ullrich / Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 (Alfred A. Knopf)
2015
Hayden Herrera / Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2014
Andrew Roberts / Napoleon: A Life (Viking)
2013
Marie Arana / Bolivar: American Liberator (Simon & Schuster)
2012
Robert A. Caro / The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Knopf)
2011
Clarence Darrow / Attorney for the Damned, John A. Farrell (Doubleday)
2010
Laura Hillenbrand / Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience & Redemption (Random House)
2009
Linda Gordon / Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (W.W. Norton & Co.)
2008
Paula J. Giddings / Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching (Amistad/HarperCollins)
2007
Simon Sebag Montefiore / Young Stalin (Alfred A. Knopf)
2006
Neal Gabler / The Triumph of the American Imagination (Alfred A. Knopf)
2005
Hilary Spurling / Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse, the Conquest of Colour, 1909-1954 (Alfred A. Knopf)
2004
Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swande / Kooning: An American Master (Alfred A. Knopf)
2003
Neil Smith / American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization (University of California Press)
2002
Robert A. Caro / Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 3 (Alfred A. Knopf)
2001
Edmund Morris / Theodore Rex (Random House)
2000
William J. Cooper, Jr / Jefferson Davis, American (Alfred A. Knopf)
1999
Judith Thurman / Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette (Alfred A. Knopf)
1998
A. Scott Berg / Lindbergh (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
1997
Sam Tanenhaus / Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (Random House)
1996
Frank McCourt / Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir (Scribner)
1995
Doris Lessing / Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949 (HarperCollins)
1994
Mikal Gilmore / Shot in the Heart (Doubleday)
1993
John Mack Faragher / Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (Henry Holt)
1992
Blanche Wiesen Cook / Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume One 1884-1993 (Viking)
1991
T.H. Watkins / Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1874-1952 (Henry Holt)
1990
Geoffrey C. Ward / A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (Harper & Row)
1989
Tobias Wolff / This Boy’s Life: A Memoir (Atlantic Monthly Press)
1988
Brenda Maddox / Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom (Houghton Mifflin)
1987
Kenneth S. Lynn / Hemingway (Simon & Schuster)
1986
Maynard Mack / Alexander Pope: A Life (W.W. Norton)
1985
Michael Scammell / Solzhenitsyn (W.W. Norton)
1984
Ernst Pawel / The Nightmare of Reason (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
1983
Seymour Hersh / The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (Summit Books)
1982
Gay Wilson Allen / Waldo Emerson: A Biography (Viking)
1981
David McCullough / Mornings on Horseback (Simon & Schuster)
1980
(Biography award concurrent with this year’s History award)
Current Interest
2018
Francisco Cantu / The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border (Riverhead Books)
2017
Nancy MacLean / Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America (Viking)
2016
Svetlana Alexievich (Bela Shayevich, translation) / Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets (Random House)
2015
Sarah Chayes / Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security (W. W. Norton and Company)
2014
Jeff Hobbs / “The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League” (Scribner)
2013
Sheri Fink / Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital (Crown)
2012
Katherine Boo / Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (Random House)
2011
Thinking Fast and Slow / Daniel Kahneman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2010
Michael Lewis / The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (W. W. Norton & Company)
2009
Dave Eggers / Zeitoun (McSweeney’s Books)
2008
Barton Gellman / Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency (The Penguin Press)
2007
Elizabeth D. Samet / Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2006
Ian Buruma / Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance (Penguin Press)
2005
Anthony Shadid / Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War (Henry Holt)
2004
Evan Wright / Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
2003
Ross Terrill / The New Chinese Empire — And What It Means for the United States (Basic Books)
2002
Judith Levine / Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex (University of Minnesota Press)
2001
Barbara Ehrenreich / Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting in America (Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company)
2000
Frances FitzGerald / Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War (Simon & Schuster)
1999
Mitchell Duneier / Sidewalk (with Photographs Ovie Carter) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
1998
Philip Gourevitch / We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
1997
Anne Fadiman / The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
1996
Peter Maass / Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War (Alfred A. Knopf)
1995
Gregory Howard Williams / Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black (Dutton)
1994
Henry Kissinger / Diplomacy (Simon & Schuster)
1993
Peter Skerry / Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority (The Free Press)
1992
Francis Fukuyama / The End of History and the Last Man (The Free Press)
1991
E.J. Dionne, Jr. / Why Americans Hate Politics: The Death of the Democratic Process (Simon & Schuster)
1990
O.B. Hardison, Jr. / Disappearing through the Skylight: Culture and Technology in the Twentieth Centur (Viking)
1989
Taylor Branch / Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963 (Simon & Schuster)
1988
William Greider / Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country (Simon & Schuster)
1987
Richard Dawkins / The Blind Watchmaker (W.W. Norton)
1986
Joseph Lelyveld / Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White (Times Books)
1985
Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M. Tipton / Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (University of California Press)
1984
Jane Jacobs / Cities and the Wealth of Nations (Random House)
1983
Walker Percy / Lost in the Cosmos (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
1982
Jonathan Schell / The Fate of the Earth (Alfred A. Knopf)
1981
Jacobo Timerman / Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number (Alfred A. Knopf)
1980
Harrison Salisbury / Without Fear or Favor (New York Times Books) [Winner of the General Award–no Current Interest Award this year]
Fiction
2018
Rebecca Makkai / The Great Believers (Viking)
2017
Mohsin Hamid/ Exit West (Riverhead Books)
2016
Adam Haslett / Imagine Me Gone (Little, Brown and Company)
2015
Valeria Luiselli, (Christina MacSweeney, translation) / The Story of My Teeth (Coffee House Press)
2014
Siri Hustvedt / The Blazing World (Simon & Schuster)
2013
Ruth Ozeki / A Tale for the Time Being (Viking)
2012
Ben Fountain / Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (HarperCollins Publishers / Ecco)
2011
Luminarium / Alex Shakar (SoHo Press)
2010
Jennifer Egan / A Visit From the Goon Squad (Knopf)
2009
Rafael Yglesias / A Happy Marriage (Scribner)
2008
Marilynne Robinson / Home (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2007
Andrew O’Hagan / Be Near Me (Harcourt)
2006
A.B. Yehoshua (Hillel Halkin, Hebrew translation) / A Woman in Jerusalem (Harcourt)
2005
Gabriel García Márquez (Edith Grossman, Spanish translation) / Memories of My Melancholy Whores (Alfred A. Knopf)
2004
Colm Tóibín / The Master: A Novel (Scribner)
2003
Pete Dexter / Train: A Novel (Doubleday)
2002
Ian McEwan / Atonement: A Novel (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
2001
Mary Robison / Why Did I Ever (Counterpoint)
2000
David Means / Assorted Fire Events: Stories (Context Books)
1999
Amit Chaudhuri / Freedom Song: Three Novels (Alfred A. Knopf)
1998
W.G. Sebald (Michael Hulse, German translation) / The Rings of Saturn (New Directions)
1997
James Carlos Blake / In the Rogue Blood (Avon Books)
1996
Rohinton Mistry / A Fine Balance (Alfred A. Knopf)
1995
William Boyd / The Blue Afternoon (Alfred A. Knopf)
1994
David Malouf / Remembering Babylon (Pantheon Books)
1993
Barbara Kingsolver / Pigs in Heaven (HarperCollins)
1992
Art Spiegelman / Maus II, A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began (Pantheon Books)
1991
Allan Gurganus / White People (Alfred A. Knopf)
1990
Edna O’Brien / Lantern Slides (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
1989
Fay Weldon / The Heart of the Country (Viking)
1988
Gabriel García Marquez / Love in the Time of Cholera (Alfred A. Knopf)
1987
James Welch / Fools Crow (Viking)
1986
Margaret Atwood / The Handmaid’s Tale (Houghton Mifflin)
1985
Louis Erdrich / Love Medicine (Holt, Rinehart and Winston)
1984
Milan Kundera / The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Harper & Row)
1983
Thomas Keneally / Schindler’s List (Simon & Schuster)
1982
Robert Stone / A Flag for Sunrise (Alfred A. Knopf)
1981
D.M. Thomas / The White Hotel (Viking)
1980
Walker Percy / The Second Coming (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Graphic Novel/Comics
(Award Added in 2009)
2018
Tillie Walden/ On A Sunbeam (First Second)
2017
Leslie Stein / Present (Drawn & Quarterly)
2016
Nick Drnaso / Beverly (Drawn & Quarterly)
2015
Riad Sattouf / Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1978-1984: A Graphic Memoir (Metropolitan Books)
2014
Jaime Hernandez / The Love Bunglers (Fantagraphics Books)
2013
Ulli Lust / Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life (Fantagraphics)
2012
Sammy Harkham / Everything Together: Collected Stories (PictureBox)
2011
Finder: Voice / Carla Speed McNeil (Dark Horse)
2010
Adam Hines / Duncan the Wonder Dog: Show One (Adhouse Books)
2009
David Mazzucchelli / Asterios Polyp (Pantheon)
History
2018
Julia Boyd / Travelers in The Third Reich: the Rise of Facism 1919-1945 (Pegasus Books)
2017
Dan Egan / The Death and Life of the Great Lakes (W.W. Norton & Company)
2016
Benjamin Madley / An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 (Yale University Press)
2015
Dan Ephron / Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel (W. W. Norton and Company)
2014
Adam Tooze / The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931 (Viking)
2013
Christopher Clark / The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (HarperCollins)
2012
Fergus M. Bordewich / America’s Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union (Simon & Schuster)
2011
Richard White / Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (W.W. Norton & Company)
2010
Thomas Powers / The Killing of Crazy Horse (Knopf)
2009
Kevin Starr / Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance 1950 – 1963 (Oxford University Press)
2008
Mark Mazower / Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe (The Penguin Press)
2007
Tim Weiner / Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (Doubleday)
2006
Lawrence Wright / The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Alfred A. Knopf)
2005
Adam Hochschild / Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves (Houghton Mifflin)
2004
Geoffrey R. Stone / Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism (W.W. Norton & Company)
2003
Henry Wiencek / An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2002
Michael B. Oren / Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford University Press)
2001
Rick Perlstein / Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (Hill and Wang Division, Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2000
Alice Kaplan / The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach (University of Chicago Press)
1999
John W. Dower / Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (W.W. Norton)
1998
Roy Porter / The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (W.W. Norton)
1997
Orlando Figes / A People’s Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution (Viking)
1996
Neal Ascherson / Black Sea (Hill & Wang)
1995
Jackson Lears / Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (Basic Books)
1994
George Chauncey / Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 (Basic Books)
1993
Anthony Grafton / New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Harvard University Press)
1992
Alexander Stille / Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families under Fascism (Summit)
1991
Nicholas Lemann / The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (Alfred A. Knopf)
1990
Richard Fletcher / The Quest for El Cid (Alfred A. Knopf)
1989
Neal Gabler / An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (Crown Books)
1988
Eric Foner / Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (Harper & Row)
1987
[No award in 1987]
1986
Geoffrey Hosking / The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within (Harvard University Press)
1985
Evan S. Connell / Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn (North Point Press)
1984
Robert Darnton / The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (Basic Books)
1983
Fernand Braudel / The Wheels of Commerce (Harper & Row)
1982
Jonathan D. Spence / The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution, 1895-1980 (Viking)
1981
Ray Allen Billington / Land of Savagery/Land of Promise (W.W. Norton)
1980
Ronald Steel / Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Atlantic/ Little Brown)
Mystery / Thriller
(Award Added in 2000)
2018
Oyinkan Braithwaite / My Sister the Serial Killer (Doubleday)
2017
Joyce Carol Oates / A Book of American Martyrs (Ecco)
2016
Bill Beverly / Dodgers (Crown)
2015
Don Winslow / The Cartel (Alfred A. Knopf)
2014
Tom Bouman / Dry Bones in the Valley (W. W. Norton & Company)
2013
J. K. Rowling Writing As Robert Galbraith / The Cuckoo’s Calling (Mulholland Books/Little, Brown & Company)
2012
Tana French / Broken Harbor (Viking)
2011
Stephen King / 11/22/1963 (Scribner)
2010
Tom Franklin / Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter (William Morrow)
2009
Stuart Neville / The Ghosts of Belfast (SOHO Press)
2008
Michael Koryta / Envy the Night (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Minotaur)
2007
Karin Fossum (Charlotte Barslund, translation) / The Indian Bride (Harcourt)
2006
Michael Connelly / Echo Park: A Novel (Little, Brown)
2005
Robert Littell / Legends: A Novel of Dissimulation (Overlook Press)
2004
Kem Nunn / Tijuana Straits: A Novel (Scribner)
2003
George P. Pelecanos / Soul Circus: A Novel (Little, Brown)
2002
George P. Pelecanos / Hell to Pay: A Novel (Little, Brown and Company)
2001
T. Jefferson Parker / Silent Joe (Hyperion)
2000
Val McDermid / A Place of Execution: A Novel (St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur)
Poetry
2018
Carl Phillips / Wild is the Wind: Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2017
Patricia Smith / Incendiary Art: Poems (TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press)
2016
Rosmarie Waldrop / Gap Gardening: Selected Poems (New Directions)
2015
Jorie Graham / From the New World: Poems 1976-2014 (Ecco/HarperCollins)
2014
Claudia Rankine / Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press)
2013
Ron Padgett / Collected Poems (Coffee House Press)
2012
Louise Glück / Poems 1962-2012 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2011
Carl Phillips / Double Shadow: Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2010
Maxine Kumin / Where I Live: New & Selected Poems 1990-2010 (W. W. Norton & Company)
2009
Brenda Hillman / Practical Water (Wesleyan University Press)
2008
Frank Bidart / Watching the Spring Festival: Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2007
Stanley Plumly / Old Heart: Poems (W.W. Norton)
2006
Frederick Seidel / Ooga-Booga (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2005
Jack Gilbert / Refusing Heaven: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf)
2004
Richard Howard / Inner Voices: Selected Poems, 1963-2003 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2003
Anthony Hecht / Collected Later Poems (Alfred A. Knopf)
2002
Cynthia Zarin / The Watercourse: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf)
2001
Anne Carson / The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos (Alfred A. Knopf)
2000
Gjertrud Schnackenberg / The Throne of Labdacus (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
1999
C.K. Williams / Repair: Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
1998
Alice Notley / Mysteries of Small Houses (Penguin Books)
1997
Charles Wright / Black Zodiac (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
1996
Alan Shapiro / Mixed Company (The University of Chicago Press)
1995
Robert Pinsky / The Inferno of Dante (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
1994
Carolyn Forché / The Angel of History (HarperCollins)
1993
Mark Doty / My Alexandria (University of Illinois Press)
1992
Adrienne Rich / An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991 (W.W. Norton)
1991
Phillip Levine / What Work Is (Alfred A. Knopf)
1990
John Caddy / The Color of Mesabi Bones (Milkweed)
1989
Donald Hall / The One Day: A Poem in Three Parts (Ticknor & Fields/ Houghton Mifflin)
1988
Richard Wilbur / New and Collected Poems (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich)
1987
William Meredith / Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf)
1986
Derek Walcott / Collected Poems, 1948-1984 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
1985
X.J. Kennedy / Cross Ties (University of Georgia Press)
1984
Charles Olson / The Maximus Poems (University of California Press)
1983
James Merrill / The Changing Light at Sandover (Atheneum)
1982
Allen Ginsberg / Plutonian Ode and Other Poems, 1977-1980 (City Lights)
1981
Ntozake Shange / Three Pieces (St. Martin’s Press)
1980
Robert Kelly / Kill the Messenger (Black Sparrow)
Science and Technology
(Award Added in 1989)
2018
Beth Macy / Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America (Little, Brown & Company)
2017
Robert Sapolsky / Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (Penguin Press)
2016
Luke Dittrich / Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets (Random House)
2015
Andrea Wulf / The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World (Alfred A. Knopf)
2014
Elizabeth Kolbert / The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Henry Holt & Co.)
2013
Alan Weisman / Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth? (Little, Brown & Company)
2012
Florence Williams / Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History (W.W. Norton & Company)
2011
Sylvia Nasar / Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius (Simon & Schuster)
2010
Oren Harman / The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness (W. W. Norton & Company)
2009
Graham Farmelo / The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom (Basic Books/Perseus Book Group)
2008
Leonard Susskind / The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics (Little, Brown and Co.)
2007
Douglas Hofstadter / I Am A Strange Loop (Basic Books)
2006
Eric R. Kandel / In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind (W.W. Norton)
2005
Diana Preston / Before the Fallout: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima (Walker & Company)
2004
Charles Wohlforth / The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change (North Point Press / Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2003
Philip J. Hilts / Protecting America’s Health: The FDA, Business, and One Hundred Years of Regulation (Alfred A. Knopf)
2002
Brenda Maddox / Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA (HarperCollins Publishers)
2001
Richard Hamblyn / The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the Language of the Skies (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2000
James Le Fanu, M.D. / The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine (Carroll & Graf)
1999
Dava Sobel / Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love (Walker and Company)
1998
Douglas Starr / Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce (Alfred A. Knopf)
1997
Steven Pinker / How the Mind Works (W.W. Norton)
1996
Carl Sagan / The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (Random House)
1995
Edward O. Wilson / Naturalist (Island Press)
1994
Jonathan Weiner / The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time (Alfred A. Knopf)
1993
Daniel McNeill and Paul Freiberger / Fuzzy Logic: The Discovery of a Revolutionary Computer Technology — and How It Is Changing Our World (Simon & Schuster)
1992
Jared Diamond / The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (HarperCollins)
1991
Grigori Medvedev / The Truth about Chernobyl (Basic Books)
1990
Jane S. Smith / Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine (William Morrow)
1989
Frans de Waal / Peacemaking among Primates (Harvard University Press)
Young Adult Literature
(Award Added in 1998)
2018
Elizabeth Acevedo / The Poet X (HarperTeen)
2017
Jason Reynolds / Long Way Down (Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books)
2016
Frances Hardinge / The Lie Tree (Harry N. Abrams)
2015
Marilyn Nelson / My Seneca Village (namelos)
2014
Candace Fleming / The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia (Schwartz & Wade/Random House Children’s)
2013
Gene Luen Yang / Boxers & Saints (First Second/Macmillan)
2012
A.S. King / Ask the Passengers (Little, Brown Books For Young Readers)
2011
The Big Crunch / Pete Hautman (Scholastic Press)
2010
Megan Whalen Turner / A Conspiracy of Kings (Greenwillow/HarperCollins)
2009
Elizabeth Partridge / Marching for Freedom: Walk Together Children and Don’t You Grow Weary (Viking Children’s Books/Penguin Group)
2008
Terry Pratchett / Nation (HarperCollins)
2007
Philip Reeve / A Darkling Plain (The Hungry City Chronicles) (Eos Books/HarperCollins)
2006
Coe Booth / Tyrell (Push / Scholastic)
2005
Per Nilsson (Tara Chace, Swedish translation) / You & You & You (Front Street/Boyds Mills Press)
2004
Melvin Burgess / Doing It (Henry Holt Books for Young Readers)
2003
Jennifer Donnelly / A Northern Light (Harcourt Children’s Books)
2002
M.T. Anderson / Feed (Candlewick Press)
2001
Mildred D. Taylor / The Land (Phyllis Fogelman Books, Penguin Putnam)
2000
Jacqueline Woodson / Miracle’s Boys (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers)
1999
Robert Cormier / Frenchtown Summer (Delacorte Press)
1998
Joan Bauer / Rules of the Road (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)