List of winners of the National Book Award

These books have won annual National Book Awards (United States).

Current categories

For early awards in all categories, see 1935 to 1941.

This section covers awards from 1950 in the four current categories as defined by their names. Some awards in "previous categories" may have been equivalent except in name.

Fiction

For a list of winners and finalists, see National Book Award for Fiction.

General fiction for adult readers is a National Book Award category continuous from 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", or both was sometimes a novel.

1950	Nelson Algren	The Man with the Golden Arm
1951	William Faulkner	The Collected Stories of William Faulkner
1952	James Jones	From Here to Eternity
1953	Ralph Ellison	Invisible Man
1954	Saul Bellow	The Adventures of Augie March
1955	William Faulkner	A Fable
1956	John O'Hara	Ten North Frederick
1957	Wright Morris	The Field of Vision
1958	John Cheever	The Wapshot Chronicle
1959	Bernard Malamud	The Magic Barrel
1960	Philip Roth	Goodbye, Columbus
1961	Conrad Richter	The Waters of Kronos
1962	Walker Percy	The Moviegoer
1963	J. F. Powers	Morte d'Urban
1964	John Updike	The Centaur
1965	Saul Bellow	Herzog
1966	Katherine Anne Porter	The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter
1967	Bernard Malamud	The Fixer
1968	Thornton Wilder	The Eighth Day
1969	Jerzy Kosinski	Steps
1970	Joyce Carol Oates	them
1971	Saul Bellow	Mr. Sammler's Planet
1972	Flannery O'Connor	The Complete Stories
1973	John Barth	Chimera
1973	John Edward Williams	Augustus
1974	Thomas Pynchon	Gravity's Rainbow
1974	Isaac Bashevis Singer	A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories
1975	Robert Stone	Dog Soldiers
1975	Thomas Williams	The Hair of Harold Roux
1976	William Gaddis	J R
1977	Wallace Stegner	The Spectator Bird
1978	Mary Lee Settle	Blood Tie
1979	Tim O'Brien	Going After Cacciato
In 1980 there were awards in many new categories including general fiction, hardcover and paperback, which are listed here. The two awards for general fiction continued for a few years.
1980 hard	William Styron	Sophie's Choice
1980 pb	John Irving	The World According to Garp
1981 hard	Wright Morris	Plains Song: For Female Voices
1981 pb	John Cheever	The Stories of John Cheever
1982 hard	John Updike	Rabbit is Rich
1982 pb	William Maxwell	So Long, See You Tomorrow
1983 hard	Alice Walker	The Color Purple
1983 pb	Eudora Welty	The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
1984	Ellen Gilchrist	Victory Over Japan: A Book of Stories
1985	Don DeLillo	White Noise
1986	E.L. Doctorow	World's Fair
1987	Larry Heinemann	Paco's Story
1988	Pete Dexter	Paris Trout
1989	John Casey	Spartina
1990	Charles Johnson	Middle Passage
1991	Norman Rush	Mating
1992	Cormac McCarthy	All the Pretty Horses
1993	E. Annie Proulx	The Shipping News
1994	William Gaddis	A Frolic of His Own
1995	Philip Roth	Sabbath's Theater
1996	Andrea Barrett	Ship Fever and Other Stories
1997	Charles Frazier	Cold Mountain
1998	Alice McDermott	Charming Billy
1999	Ha Jin	Waiting
2000	Susan Sontag	In America
2001	Jonathan Franzen	The Corrections
2002	Julia Glass	Three Junes
2003	Shirley Hazzard	The Great Fire
2004	Lily Tuck	The News from Paraguay
2005	William T. Vollmann	Europe Central
2006	Richard Powers	The Echo Maker
2007	Denis Johnson	Tree of Smoke
2008	Peter Matthiessen	Shadow Country
2009	Colum McCann	Let the Great World Spin
2010	Jaimy Gordon	Lord of Misrule
2011	Jesmyn Ward	Salvage the Bones

Nonfiction

For a list of winners and finalists, see National Book Award for 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.

1950	Ralph L. Rusk	Ralph Waldo Emerson (biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson)
1951	Newton Arvin	Herman Melville (biography of Herman Melville)
1952	Rachel Carson	The Sea Around Us
1953	Bernard A. DeVoto	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 (see Edward Coke)
1959	J. Christopher Herold	Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël
1960	Richard Ellmann	James Joyce (biography of James Joyce)
1961	William L. Shirer	The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
1962	Lewis Mumford	The City in History: Its Origins, its Transformations and its Prospects
1963	Leon Edel	Henry James, volumes II and III (biography of Henry James)
1964   to 1983	For two decades beginning 1964 there was no general award for nonfiction. See Arts and Letters; History and Biography; and Science, Philosophy and Religion.
1984	Robert V. Remini	Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845
1985	J. Anthony Lukas	Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families
1986	Barry Lopez	Arctic Dreams
1987	Richard Rhodes	The Making of the Atomic Bomb
1988	Neil Sheehan	A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
1989	Thomas L. Friedman	From Beirut to Jerusalem
1990	Ron Chernow	The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance
1991	Orlando Patterson	Freedom
1992	Paul Monette	Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story
1993	Gore Vidal	United States: Essays 1952-1992
1994	Sherwin B. Nuland	How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter
1995	Tina Rosenberg	The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism
1996	James P. Carroll	An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War that Came Between Us
1997	Joseph J. Ellis	American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
1998	Edward Ball	Slaves in the Family
1999	John W. Dower	Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
2000	Nathaniel Philbrick	In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
2001	Andrew Solomon	The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
2002	Robert A. Caro	Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
2003	Carlos Eire	Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy
2004	Kevin Boyle	Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
2005	Joan Didion	The Year of Magical Thinking
2006	Timothy Egan	The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
2007	Tim Weiner	Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
2008	Annette Gordon-Reed	The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
2009	T.J. Stiles	The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
2010	Patti Smith	Just Kids
2011	Stephen Greenblatt	The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

Poetry

For a list of winners and finalists, see National Book Award for Poetry.

1950		William Carlos Williams	Paterson: Book III and Selected Poems
1951		Wallace Stevens	The Auroras of Autumn
1952		Marianne Moore	Collected Poems
1953		Archibald MacLeish	Collected Poems, 1917-1952
1954		Conrad Aiken	Collected Poems
1955		Wallace Stevens	The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
1956		W. H. Auden	The Shield of Achilles
1957		Richard Wilbur	Things of This World
1958		Robert Penn Warren	Promises: Poems, 1954-1956
1959		Theodore Roethke	Words for the Wind
1960		Robert Lowell	Life Studies
1961		Randall Jarrell	The Woman at the Washington Zoo
1962		Alan Dugan	Poems
1963		William Stafford	Traveling Through the Dark
1964		John Crowe Ransom	Selected Poems
1965		Theodore Roethke	The Far Field
1966		James Dickey	Buckdancer's Choice
1967		James Merrill	Nights and Days
1968		Robert Bly	The Light Around the Body
1969		John Berryman	His Toy, His Dream, His Rest
1970		Elizabeth Bishop	The Complete Poems
1971		Mona Van Duyn	To See, To Take
1972		Frank O'Hara	The Collected Works of Frank O'Hara
1972		Howard Moss	Selected Poems
1973		A. R. Ammons	Collected Poems, 1951-1971
1974		Allen Ginsberg	The Fall of America: Poems of these States, 1965-1971
1974		Adrienne Rich	Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972
1975		Marilyn Hacker	Presentation Piece
1976		John Ashbery	Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror
1977		Richard Eberhart	Collected Poems, 1930-1976
1978		Howard Nemerov	The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov
1979		James Merrill	Mirabell: Book of Numbers
1980		Philip Levine	Ashes: Poems New and Old
1981		Lisel Mueller	The Need to Hold Still
1982		William Bronk	Life Supports: New and Collected Poems
1983		Galway Kinnell	Selected Poems
1983		Charles Wright	Country Music: Selected Early Poems
1985   to 1990			no award
1991		Philip Levine	What Work Is
1992		Mary Oliver	New and Selected Poems
1993		A. R. Ammons	Garbage
1994		James Tate	A Worshipful Company of Fletchers
1995		Stanley Kunitz	Passing Through: The Later Poems
1996		Hayden Carruth	Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey
1997		William Meredith	Effort at Speech: New and Selected Poems
1998		Gerald Stern	This Time: New and Selected Poems
1999		Ai	Vice: New and Selected Poems
2000		Lucille Clifton	Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000
2001		Alan Dugan	Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry
2002		Ruth Stone	In the Next Galaxy
2003		C. K. Williams	The Singing
2004		Jean Valentine	Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003
2005		W. S. Merwin	Migration: New and Selected Poems
2006		Nathaniel Mackey	Splay Anthem
2007		Robert Hass	Time and Materials: Poems, 1997-2005
2008		Mark Doty	Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems
2009		Keith Waldrop	Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy
2010		Terrance Hayes	Lighthead
2011		Nikky Finney	Head Off & Split

Young People's Literature

For a list of winners and finalists, see National Book Award for Young People's Literature.

1996	Victor Martinez	Parrott In the Oven: MiVida
1997	Han Nolan	Dancing on the Edge
1998	Louis Sachar	Holes
1999	Kimberly Willis Holt	When Zachary Beaver Came to Town
2000	Gloria Whelan	Homeless Bird
2001	Virginia Euwer Wolff	True Believer
2002	Nancy Farmer	The House of the Scorpion
2003	Polly Horvath	The Canning Season
2004	Pete Hautman	Godless
2005	Jeanne Birdsall	The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
2006	M.T. Anderson	The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. I
2007	Sherman Alexie	The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
2008	Judy Blundell	What I Saw and How I Lied
2009	Phillip Hoose	Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
2010	Kathryn Erskine	Mockingbird
2011	Thanhha Lai	Inside Out and Back Again

Previous categories

For early awards in all categories, see 1935 to 1941.

This section covers awards from 1950 in categories that differ from the "current categories" in name. Some of them may have been substantially equivalent to current categories.

Arts and Letters

"Arts and Letters (Nonfiction)" in 1964.

1964	Aileen Ward	John Keats: The Making of a Poet
1965	Eleanor Clark	The Oysters of Locmariaquer
1966	Janet Flanner	Paris Journal, 1944-1965
1967	Justin Kaplan	Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography
1968	William Troy	Selected Essays
1969	Norman Mailer	The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History
1970	Lillian Hellman	An Unfinished Woman: A Memoir
1971	Francis Steegmuller	Cocteau: A Biography
1972	Charles Rosen	The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven
1973	Arthur M. Wilson	Diderot
1974	Pauline Kael	Deeper Into Movies
1975	Roger Shattuck	Marcel Proust
1975	Lewis Thomas	The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
1976	Paul Fussell	The Great War and Modern Memory

History and (Auto)biography

History and Biography

"History and Biography (Nonfiction)" in 1964.

1964	William H. McNeill	The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community
1965	Louis Fischer	The Life of Lenin
1966	Arthur Schlesinger	A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House
1967	Peter Gay	The Enlightenment, Vol. I: An Interpretation of the Rise of Modern Paganism
1968	George F. Kennan	Memoirs: 1925-1950
1969	Winthrop D. Jordan	White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812
1970	T. Harry Williams	Huey Long (biography of Huey Long)
1971	James MacGregor Burns	Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt)
1976	David Brion Davis	The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823

History

1972	Allan Nevins	Ordeal of the Union, volumes VII and VIII
1973	Robert Manson Myers	The Children of Pride
1973	Isaiah Trunk	Judenrat
1974	John Clive	Thomas Babington Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian
1975	Bernard Bailyn	The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson
1977	Irving Howe	World of Our Fathers
1978	David McCullough	The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914
1979	Richard Beale Davis	Intellectual Life in the Colonial South, 1585-1763
1980 hard	Henry A. Kissinger	White House Years
1980 pb	Barbara W. Tuchman	A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
1981 hard	John Boswell	Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality
1981 pb	Leon F. Litwack	Been in the Storm so Long: The Aftermath of Slavery
1982 hard	Father Peter John Powell	People of the Sacred Mountain: A History of the Northern Cheyenne Chiefs and Warrior Societies, 1830-1879
1982 pb	Robert Wohl	The Generation of 1914
1983 hard	Alan Brinkley	Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression
1983 pb	Frank E. Manuel and  Fritzie P. Manuel	Utopian Thought in the Western World

Biography

1972	Joseph P. Lash	Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship, Based on Eleanor Roosevelt's Private Papers
1973	James Thomas Flexner	George Washington, Vol. IV: Anguish and Farewell, 1793-1799
1974	John Clive	Thomas Babington Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian
1974	Douglas Day	Malcolm Lowry: A Biography
1975	Richard B. Sewall	The Life of Emily Dickinson
1980 hard	Edmund Morris	The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
1980 pb	A. Scott Berg	Max Perkins: Editor of Genius

Biography and Autobiography

1977	W.A. Swanberg	Norman Thomas: The Last Idealist
1978	W. Jackson Bate	Samuel Johnson (biography of Samuel Johnson)
1979	Arthur Schlesinger	Robert Kennedy and His Times

Autobiography

1980 hard	Lauren Bacall	Lauren Bacall by Myself
1980 pb	Malcolm Cowley	And I Worked at the Writer's Trade: Chapters of Literary History 1918-1978

Autobiography/Biography

1981 hard	Justin Kaplan	Walt Whitman (biography of Walt Whitman)
1981 pb	Deirdre Bair	Samuel Beckett (biography of Samuel Beckett)
1982 hard	David McCullough	Mornings on Horseback
1982 pb	Ronald Steel	Walter Lippmann and the American Century
1983 hard	Judith Thurman	Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller
1983 pb	James R. Mellow	Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Time

Science, Philosophy and Religion

Science, Philosophy and Religion

"Science, Philosophy and Religion (Nonfiction)" in 1964.

1964	Christopher Tunnard and  Boris Pushkarev	Man-made America
1965	Norbert Wiener	God and Golem, Inc: A Comment on Certain Points where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion
1967	Oscar Lewis	La Vida
1968	Jonathan Kozol	Death at an Early Age

The Sciences

1969	Robert J. Lifton	Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima
1971	Raymond Phineas Sterns	Science in the British Colonies of America
1972	George L. Small	The Blue Whale
1973	George B. Schaller	The Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator-Prey Relations
1974	S. E. Luria	Life: The Unfinished Experiment
1975	Silvano Arieti	Interpretation of Schizophrenia
1975	Lewis Thomas	The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

Science

1980 hard	Douglas Hofstadter	Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
1980 pb	Gary Zukav	The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics
1981 hard	Stephen Jay Gould	The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections on Natural History
1981 pb	Lewis Thomas	The Medusa and the Snail
1982 hard	Donald C. Johanson and  Maitland A. Edey	Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind
1982 pb	Fred Alan Wolf	Taking the Quantum Leap: The New Physics for Nonscientists
1983 hard	Abraham Pais	"Subtle is the Lord...": The Science and Life of Albert Einstein
1983 pb	Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh	The Mathematical Experience
1983 pb	Joyce Carol Thomas	Marked by Fire

Philosophy and Religion

1970	Erik H. Erikson	Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence
1972	Martin E. Marty	Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America
1973	S. E. Ahlstrom	A Religious History of the American People
1974	Maurice Natanson	Edmund Husserl: Philosopher of Infinite Tasks
1975	Robert Nozick	Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Religion/Inspiration

1980 hard	Elaine Pagels	The Gnostic Gospels
1980 pb	Sheldon Vanauken	A Severe Mercy

Translation

1967	Gregory Rabassa	Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch
1967	Willard Trask	Casanova's History of My Life
1968	Howard Hong and  Edna Hong	Søren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers
1969	William Weaver	Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics
1970	Ralph Manheim	Céline's Castle to Castle
1971	Frank Jones	Bertolt Brecht's Saint Joan of the Stockyards
1971	Edward G. Seidensticker	Yasunari Kawabata's The Sound of the Mountain
1972	Austryn Wainhouse	Jacques Monod's Chance and Necessity
1973	Allen Mandelbaum	The Aeneid of Virgil
1974	Karen Brazell	The Confessions of Lady Nijo
1974	Helen R. Lane	Octavio Paz's Alternating Current
1974	Jackson Matthews	Paul Valéry's Monsieur Teste
1975	Anthony Kerrigan	Miguel de Unamuno's The Agony of Christianity and Essays on Faith
1977	Li-Li Ch'en	Master Tung's Western Chamber Romance
1978	Howard Nemerov	Uwe George's In the Deserts of This Earth
1979	Clayton Eshleman and José Rubia Barcia	César Vallejo's The Complete Posthumous Poetry
1980	William Arrowsmith	Cesare Pavese's Hard Labor
1980	Jane Gary Harris and Constance Link	Osip E. Mandelstam's Complete Critical Prose and Letters
1981	Francis Steegmuller	The Letters of Gustave Flaubert
1981	John E. Woods	Arno Schmidt's Evening Edged in Gold
1982	Robert Lyons Danly	Higuchi Ichiyō's In the Shade of Spring Leaves
1982	Ian Hideo Levy	The Ten Thousand Leaves: A Translation of The Man'Yoshu, Japan's Premier Anthology of Classical Poetry
1983	Richard Howard	Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal

Children's Literature

Children's Literature

1969	Meindert DeJong	Journey from Peppermint Street
1976	Walter D. Edmonds	Bert Breen's Barn
1977	Katherine Paterson	The Master Puppeteer
1978	Herbert Kohl and  Judith Kohl	The View From the Oak: The Private Worlds of Other Creatures
1979	Katherine Paterson	The Great Gilly Hopkins

Children's Books

1970	Isaac Bashevis Singer	A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing up in Warsaw
1971	Lloyd Alexander	The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian
1972	Donald Barthelme	The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine or The Hithering Thithering Djinn
1973	Ursula K. Le Guin	The Farthest Shore
1974	Eleanor Cameron	The Court of the Stone Children
1975	Virginia Hamilton	M. C. Higgins the Great
1980 hard	Joan Blos	A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal
1980 pb	Madeleine L'Engle	A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Children's Books, Fiction

"Children's Book, Fiction" in 1981; "Children's Fiction" in 1983.

1981 hard	Betsy Byars	The Night Swimmers
1981 pb	Beverly Cleary	Ramona and Her Mother
1982 hard	Lloyd Alexander	Westmark
1982 pb	Ouida Sebestyen	Words by Heart
1983 hard	Jean Fritz	Homesick: My Own Story
1983 pb	Paula Fox	A Place Apart
1983 pb	Joyce Carol Thomas	Marked by Fire

Children's Books, Non-fiction

"Children's Book, Nonfiction" in 1981.

1981 hard	Alison Cragin Herzig and  Jane Lawrence	Mali -- Oh, Boy! Babies
1982	Susan Bonners	A Penguin Year
1983	James Cross Giblin	Chimney Sweeps

Children's Books, Picture Books

In 1983 Children's Books, Picture Books was called Children's Books, Picture Books.

1982 hard	Maurice Sendak	Outside Over There
1982 pb	Peter Spier	Noah's Ark
1983 hard	Barbara Cooney	Miss Rumphius
1983 hard	William Steig	Doctor De Soto
1983 pb	Mary Ann Hoberman and  Betty Fraser, illustrator	A House is a House for Me

Current

Contemporary Affairs

1972	Stewart Brand, editor	The Last Whole Earth Catalogue
1973	Frances FitzGerald	Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam
1974	Murray Kempton	The Briar Patch
1975	Theodore Rosengarten	All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (see Ned Cobb)
1976	Michael J. Arlen	Passage to Ararat

Contemporary Thought

1977	Bruno Bettelheim	The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales
1978	Gloria Emerson	Winners and Losers
1979	Peter Matthiessen	The Snow Leopard

Current Interest

1980 hard	Julia Child	Julia Child and More Company
1980 pb	Christopher Lasch	The Culture of Narcissism

Miscellaneous 1980 to 1985

First Novel

1980	William Wharton	Birdy
1981	Ann Arensberg	Sister Wolf
1982	Robb Forman Dew	Dale Loves Sophie to Death
1983	Gloria Naylor	The Women of Brewster Place

First Work of Fiction

1984	Harriet Doerr	Stones for Ibarra
1985	Bob Shacochis	Easy in the Islands

Science Fiction

1980 hard	Frederik Pohl	Jem
1980 pb	Walter Wangerin	The Book of the Dun Cow

Mystery

1980 hard	John D. MacDonald	The Green Ripper
1980 pb	William F. Buckley	Stained Glass

Western

1980

Louis L'Amour

Bendigo Shafter

Original Paperback

1983

Lisa Goldstein

The Red Magician

General Nonfiction

1980 hard	Tom Wolfe	The Right Stuff
1980 pb	Peter Matthiessen	The Snow Leopard
1981 hard	Maxine Hong Kingston	China Men
1981 pb	Jane Kramer	The Last Cowboy
1982 hard	Tracy Kidder	The Soul of a New Machine
1982 pb	Victor S. Navasky	Naming Names
1983 hard	Fox Butterfield	China: Alive in the Bitter Sea
1983 pb	James Fallows	National Defense

General Reference Books

1980 hard	Elder Witt, editor	The Complete Directory
1980 pb	Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh	The Complete Directory of Prime Time Network TV Shows: 1946–Present

1935 to 1941

The first National Book Awards were presented in May 1936 at the annual convention of the American Booksellers Association to four 1935 books selected by its members. Subsequently the awards were announced mid-February to March 1 and presented at the convention. For 1937 books there were ballots from 319 stores, about three times so many as for 1935. There had been 600 ABA members in 1936.

The "Most Distinguished" Nonfiction, Biography, and Novel (for 1935 and 1936) were reduced to two and termed "Favorite" Nonfiction and Fiction beginning 1937. Master of ceremonies Clifton Fadiman declined to consider the Pulitzer Prizes (not yet announced in February 1938) as potential ratifications. "Unlike the Pulitzer Prize committee, the booksellers merely vote for their favorite books. They do not say it is the best book or the one that will elevate the standard of manhood or womanhood. Twenty years from now we can decide which are the masterpieces. This year we can only decide which books we enjoyed reading the most."

The Bookseller Discovery officially recognized "outstanding merit which failed to receive adequate sales and recognition" (quoted by NYT) Finall that award stood alone for 1941 and the New York Times frankly called it "a sort of consolation prize that the booksellers hope will draw attention to his work".

Authors and publishers outside the United States were eligible and there were several winners by non-U.S. authors (at least Lofts, Curie, de Saint-Exupéry, Du Maurier, and Llewellyn). The Bookseller Discovery and the general awards for fiction and non-fiction were conferred six times in seven years, the Most Original Book five times, and the biography award in the first two years only.

Dates are years of publication.

Bookseller Discovery

1935 —

1936, Norah Lofts, (short stories), I Met a Gypsy

1937, Lawrence Watkin, (novel), On Borrowed Time

1938, David Fairchild, (nonfiction), The World Was My Garden: Travels of a Plant Explorer

1939, Elgin Groseclose, (novel), Ararat

1940, Perry Burgess, Who Walk Alone (1942 subtitle, Life of a Leper)

1941, George Sessions Perry, (novel), Hold Autumn in Your Hand

Non-fiction

1935, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, North to the Orient

1936, Van Wyck Brooks, The Flowering of New England: 1815-1865

1937, Ève Curie, Madame Curie —biography of Marie Curie

1938, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Listen! The Wind

1939, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars

1940, Hans Zinsser, As I Remember Him: The Biography of R.S. —autobiography

1941 —

Biography (both winners were autobiographies)

1935, Vincent Sheean, Personal History

1936, Victor Heiser (see Leprosy), An American Doctor's Odyssey: Adventures in Forty-Five Countries

Novel

1935, Rachel Field, Time Out of Mind

1936, Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind

1937, A. J. Cronin, The Citadel

1938, Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca

1939, John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

1940, Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

1941 —

Most Original Book

1935, Charles G. Finney, (novel), The Circus of Dr. Lao

1936, Della T. Lutes, (autobiography & cookbook), The Country Kitchen

1937, Carl Crow, (nonfiction), Four Hundred Million Customers: The Experiences—Some Happy, Some Sad, of an American Living in China, and What They Taught Him

1938, Margaret Halsey, (humor, satire), With Malice Toward Some

1939, Dalton Trumbo, (novel), Johnny Got His Gun

1940 —

1941 —