2024: King: A Life by Jonathan Eig
2024: Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo
2023: G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage
2022: Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist's Memoir of the Jim Crow South by the late Winfred Rembert as told to Erin I. Kelly
2021: The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by the late Les Payne and Tamara Payne
2020: Sontag: Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser
2019: The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C. Stewart
2018: Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser
2017: The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar
2016: Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan
2015: The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe by David I. Kertzer
2014: Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall
2013: The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss
2012: George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis
2011: Washington : A Life by Ron Chernow
2010: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles
2009: American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham
2008: Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson
2007: The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher by Debby Applegate
2006: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
2005: de Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan
2004: Khrushchev: The Man and His Era by William Taubman
2003: Master of the Senate by Robert A. Caro
2002: John Adams by David McCullough
2001: W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963 by David Levering Lewis
2000: Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff
1999: Lindbergh by A. Scott Berg
1998: Personal History by Katharine Graham
1997: Angela's Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt
1996: God: A Biography by Jack Miles
1995: Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life by Joan D. Hedrick
1994: W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race 1868-1919 by David Levering Lewis
1993: Truman by David McCullough
1992: Fortunate Son: The Healing of a Vietnam Vet by Lewis B. Puller
1991: Jackson Pollock by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith
1990: Machiavelli in Hell by Sebastian de Grazia
1989: Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellmann
1988: Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe by David Herbert Donald
1987: Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by David J. Garrow
1986: Louise Bogan: A Portrait by Elizabeth Frank
1985: The Life and Times of Cotton Mather by Kenneth Silverman
1984: Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915 by Louis R. Harlan
1983: Growing Up by Russell Baker
1982: Grant: A Biography by William McFeely
1981: Peter the Great: His Life and World by Robert K. Massie
1980: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
1979: Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews by Leonard Baker
1978: Samuel Johnson by Walter Jackson Bate
1977: A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence by John E. Mack
1976: Edith Wharton: A Biography by R. W. B. Lewis
1975: The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro
1974: O'Neill, Son and Artist by Louis Sheaffer
1973: Luce and His Empire by W. A. Swanberg
1972: Eleanor and Franklin by Joseph P. Lash
1971: Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 1915 -1938 by Lawrance Thompson
1970: Huey Long by T. Harry Williams
1969: The Man From New York: John Quinn and His Friends by Benjamin Lawrence Reid
1968: Memoirs by George F. Kennan
1967: Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain by Justin Kaplan
1966: A Thousand Days by Arthur M. Schlesinger
1965: Henry Adams, three volumes by Ernest Samuels
1964: John Keats by Walter Jackson Bate
1963: Henry James by Leon Edel
1961: Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War by David Donald
1960: John Paul Jones by Samuel Eliot Morison
1959: Woodrow Wilson by Arthur Walworth
1958: George Washington, Volumes I-VII by Douglas Southall Freeman with John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth
1957: Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy
1956: Benjamin Henry Latrobe by Talbot Faulkner Hamlin
1955: The Taft Story by William S. White
1954: The Spirit of St. Louis by Charles A. Lindbergh
1953: Edmund Pendleton 1721-1803 by David J. Mays
1952: Charles Evans Hughes by Merlo J. Pusey
1951: John C. Calhoun: American Portrait by Margaret Louise Coit
1950: John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy by Samuel Flagg Bemis
1949: Roosevelt and Hopkins by Robert E. Sherwood
1948: Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow by Margaret Clapp
1947: The Autobiography of William Allen White by William Allen White
1946: Son of the Wilderness by Linnie Marsh Wolfe
1945: George Bancroft: Brahmin Rebel by Russell Blaine Nye
1944: The American Leonardo: The Life of Samuel F B. Morse by Carleton Mabee
1943: Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus by Samuel Eliot Morison
1942: Crusader in Crinoline by Forrest Wilson
1941: Jonathan Edwards, 1703–1758: A Biography by Ola Elizabeth Winslow
1940: Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters. Vols. VII and VIII by Ray Stannard Baker
1939: Benjamin Franklin by Carl Van Doren
1938: The Life of Andrew Jackson by Marquis James
1938: Pedlar's Progress by Odell Shepard
1937: Hamilton Fish: The Inner History of the Grant Administration by Allan Nevins
1936: The Thought and Character of William James: As Revealed in Unpublished Correspondence and Notes, Together with His Published Writings by Ralph Barton Perry
1935: R. E. Lee by Douglas S. Freeman
1934: John Hay by Tyler Dennett
1933: Grover Cleveland by Allan Nevins
1932: Theodore Roosevelt by Henry F. Pringle
1931: Charles W. Eliot by Henry James
1930: The Raven by Marquis James
1929: The Training of an American: The Earlier Life and Letters of Walter H. Page by Burton J. Hendrick
1928: The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas by Charles Edward Russell
1927: Whitman: An Interpretation in Narrative by Emory Holloway
1926: The Life of Sir William Osler, 2 vols. by Harvey Cushing
1925: Barrett Wendell and His Letters by M. A. Dewolfe Howe
1924: From Immigrant to Inventor by Michael Idvorsky Pupin
1923: The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page by Burton J. Hendrick
1922: A Daughter of the Middle Border by Hamlin Garland
1921: The Americanization of Edward Bok by Edward Bok
1920: The Life of John Marshall by Albert J. Beveridge
1919: The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams
1918: Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed by William Cabell Bruce
1917: Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910 by Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliott assisted by Florence Howe Hall