List of winners of the National Book Award
These authors and books have won the annual National Book Awards, awarded to American authors by the National Book Foundation based in the United States.
History of categories
The National Book Awards were first awarded to four 1935 publications in May 1936. Contrary to that historical fact, the National Book Foundation currently recognizes only a history of purely literary awards that begins in 1950. The [|pre-war awards] and the 1980 to 1983 [|graphics awards] are covered below following the main list of current award categories.There have been five award categories since 2018: Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry, Young People's Literature, and Translated Literature. The main list below is organized by the current award categories and by year.
The categories' winners are selected from hundreds of preliminary nominees – "from 150 titles to upwards of 600 titles." Since 2013, a long list of ten entries for each of the categories has been selected and announced in September, followed by five finalists for each category in October, with the year's winners announced in November.
[|Repeat winners] and [|split awards] are covered at the bottom of the page.
Current award categories
This section covers awards starting in 1950 in the five current categories as defined by their names. Some awards in "previous categories" may have been equivalent except in name.Fiction
General fiction for adult readers is a National Book Award category that has been continuous since 1950, with multiple awards for a few years beginning 1980. From [|1935 to 1941], there were six annual awards for novels or general fiction and the "Bookseller Discovery", the "Most Original Book"; both awards were sometimes given to a novel.| Year | Author | Title | Ref. |
| 1950 | ' | ||
| 1951 | ' | ||
| 1952 | From Here to Eternity | ||
| 1953 | Invisible Man | ||
| 1954 | ' | ||
| 1955 | ' | ||
| 1956 | Ten North Frederick | ||
| 1957 | ' | ||
| 1958 | ' | ||
| 1959 | ' | ||
| 1960 | Goodbye, Columbus | ||
| 1961 | ' | ||
| 1962 | ' | ||
| 1963 | Morte d'Urban | ||
| 1964 | ' | ||
| 1965 | Herzog | ||
| 1966 | ' | ||
| 1967 | ' | ||
| 1968 | ' | ||
| 1969 | Steps | ||
| 1970 | them | ||
| 1971 | Mr. Sammler's Planet | ||
| 1972 | ' | ||
| 1973 | Chimera | ||
| 1973 | Augustus | ||
| 1974 | Gravity's Rainbow | ||
| 1974 | ' | ||
| 1975 | Dog Soldiers | ||
| 1975 | ' | ||
| 1976 | J R | ||
| 1977 | ' | ||
| 1978 | Blood Tie | ||
| 1979 | Going After Cacciato |
Dozens of new categories were introduced in 1980, including "General fiction", hardcover and paperback, which are both listed here. The comprehensive "Fiction" genre and hard-or-soft format were both restored three years later.
| Year | Category | Author | Title | Ref. |
| 1980 | Hardcover | Sophie's Choice | ||
| 1980 | Paperback | ' | ||
| 1981 | Hardcover | Plains Song | ||
| 1981 | Paperback | ' | ||
| 1982 | Hardcover | Rabbit is Rich | ||
| 1982 | Paperback | So Long, See You Tomorrow | ||
| 1983 | Hardcover | ' | ||
| 1983 | Paperback | ' |
The comprehensive "Fiction" category returned in 1984.
| Year | Author | Title | Ref |
| 1984 | Victory Over Japan: A Book of Stories | ||
| 1985 | White Noise | ||
| 1986 | World's Fair | ||
| 1987 | Paco's Story | ||
| 1988 | Paris Trout | ||
| 1989 | Spartina | ||
| 1990 | Middle Passage | ||
| 1991 | Mating | ||
| 1992 | All the Pretty Horses | ||
| 1993 | ' | ||
| 1994 | ' | ||
| 1995 | Sabbath's Theater | ||
| 1996 | Ship Fever and Other Stories | ||
| 1997 | Cold Mountain | ||
| 1998 | Charming Billy | ||
| 1999 | Waiting | ||
| 2000 | In America | ||
| 2001 | ' | ||
| 2002 | Three Junes | ||
| 2003 | ' | ||
| 2004 | ' | ||
| 2005 | Europe Central | ||
| 2006 | ' | ||
| 2007 | Tree of Smoke | ||
| 2008 | Shadow Country | ||
| 2009 | Let the Great World Spin | ||
| 2010 | Lord of Misrule | ||
| 2011 | Salvage the Bones | ||
| 2012 | ' | ||
| 2013 | ' | ||
| 2014 | Redeployment | ||
| 2015 | Fortune Smiles | ||
| 2016 | ' | ||
| 2017 | Sing, Unburied, Sing | ||
| 2018 | ' | ||
| 2019 | Trust Exercise | ||
| 2020 | Interior Chinatown | ||
| 2021 | Hell of a Book | ||
| 2022 | ' | ||
| 2023 | Justin Torres | Blackouts | |
| 2024 | Percival Everett | James | |
| 2025 | Rabih Alameddine | The True True Story of Raja the Gullible |
Nonfiction
General nonfiction for adult readers is a National Book Award category continuous only from 1984, when the general award was restored after two decades of awards in several nonfiction categories. From 1935 to 1941 there were six annual awards for general nonfiction, two for biography, and the Bookseller Discovery or Most Original Book was sometimes nonfiction.| Year | Author | Title | Ref. |
| 1950 | Ralph L. Rusk | The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson | |
| 1951 | Newton Arvin | Herman Melville | |
| 1952 | Rachel Carson | The Sea Around Us | |
| 1953 | Bernard De Voto, | The Course of Empire | |
| 1954 | Bruce Catton | A Stillness at Appomattox | |
| 1955 | Joseph Wood Krutch | The Measure of Man | |
| 1956 | Herbert Kubly | An American in Italy | |
| 1957 | George F. Kennan | Russia Leaves the War | |
| 1958 | Catherine Drinker Bowen | The Lion and the Throne | |
| 1959 | J. Christopher Herold | Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël |
Multiple nonfiction categories were introduced in 1964, initially [|Arts and Letters]; History and Biography; and [|Science, Philosophy and Religion]. See also [|Contemporary] and [|General Nonfiction]. The comprehensive "Nonfiction" genre was restored twenty years later.
| Year | Author | Title | Ref. |
| 1984 | Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833–1845 | ||
| 1985 | Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families | ||
| 1986 | Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape | ||
| 1987 | ' | ||
| 1988 | ' | ||
| 1989 | From Beirut to Jerusalem | ||
| 1990 | : An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance | ||
| 1991 | Freedom, Vol. 1: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture | ||
| 1992 | Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story | ||
| 1993 | United States: Essays 1952–1992 | ||
| 1994 | How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter | ||
| 1995 | ' | ||
| 1996 | : God, My Father, and the War that Came Between Us | ||
| 1997 | American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson | ||
| 1998 | Slaves in the Family | ||
| 1999 | Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II | ||
| 2000 | In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex | ||
| 2001 | : An Atlas of Depression | ||
| 2002 | Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson | ||
| 2003 | Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy | ||
| 2004 | Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age | ||
| 2005 | ' | ||
| 2006 | : The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl | ||
| 2007 | Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA | ||
| 2008 | : An American Family | ||
| 2009 | : The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt | ||
| 2010 | Just Kids | ||
| 2011 | The Swerve: How the World Became Modern | ||
| 2012 | Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity | ||
| 2013 | : An Inner History of the New America | ||
| 2014 | Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China | ||
| 2015 | Between the World and Me | ||
| 2016 | Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America | ||
| 2017 | The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia | ||
| 2018 | ' | ||
| 2019 | ' | ||
| 2020 | and Tamara Payne | : The Life of Malcolm X | |
| 2021 | All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake | ||
| 2022 | South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon To Understand the Soul of a Nation | ||
| 2023 | Ned Blackhawk | The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the unmaking of US history | |
| 2024 | Jason De León | Soldiers and Kings | |
| 2025 | Omar El Akkad | One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This |