Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction by Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction has been awarded since 1962 for a distinguished book of non-fiction by an American author that is not eligible for consideration in any other category.
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The Making of the President, 1960 by Theodore White
The Making of the President, 1960, written by Theodore White analyzes the 1960 election in which John F. Kennedy was elected President of the United States. The book, written in a novelistic st...
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The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
The Guns of August, originally published as August 1914 (1962), is a military history book written by Barbara Tuchman. It primarily describes the events of the first month of World War I. The focus...
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Anti-intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter
Written in response to the political and intellectual conditions of the 1950s, Anti-intellectualism in American Life emerged as a grand attack on the institutions to which society historically entr...
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O Strange New World by Howard Mumford Jones
O Strange New World: American Culture-The Formative Years was written by Howard Mumford Jones and published by Viking Press in 1964; it won the 1965 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
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Wandering Through Winter by Edwin Way Teale
This book documents the travels of a naturalist and his wife, Nellie I. Teale who spent four winter months traveling twenty thousand miles across the southwestern United States and parts of the Mid...
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The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture by David Brion Davis
The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture written by David Brion Davis and published by Cornell University Press in 1966 won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1967.
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Rousseau and Revolution by Will, Ariel Durant
Rousseau and Revolution: A History of Civilization in France, England, and Germany from 1756, and in the Remainder of Europe from 1715, to 1789. This volume centers on Jean-Jacques Rousseau and ...
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So Human an Animal by René Dubos
Until cloning becomes the order of the day, the author contends that each human is unique. Every person faces the danger of losing this humanness to mechanized surroundings. Is the human species be...
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The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer
The Armies of the Night (1968) is a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning nonfiction novel written by Norman Mailer and sub-titled History as a Novel/The Novel as History. Mailer essential...
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Gandhi's Truth by Erik H. Erikson
Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence, written by Erik H. Erikson and published by W. W. Norton & Company in 1969, it won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the 19...
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The Rising Sun by John Toland
A chronicle of the World War II rise and fall of the Japanese empire, from the invasion of Manchuria and China to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From the Japanese perspective, in the...
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Stilwell and the American Experience in China by Barbara Wertheim Tuchman
Using the life of Joseph Stilwell, the military attache to China in 1935-39 and commander of United States forces and allied chief of staff to Chiang Kai-shek in 1942-44, this book explores the his...
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Fire in the Lake by Frances FitzGerald
Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam, written by Frances FitzGerald and published by both Back Bay Publishing and Little, Brown and Company in 1972, in 1973 won the Pulitze...
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Children of Crisis by Robert Coles
Children of Crisis is an award winning series of 5 volumes by child psychiatrist and author Robert Coles published by Little, Brown and Company between 1967 and 1977; a social study of children in ...
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The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
The basic premise of The Denial of Death is that human civilization is ultimately an elaborate, symbolic defense mechanism against the knowledge of our mortality, which in turn acts as the emotiona...
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Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a 1974 nonfiction narrative book by Annie Dillard. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975. The book is about Dillard's experiences at Tinker Creek, which is located in Virg...
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Why Survive? Being Old in America by Robert Neil Butler
Dr. Butler's eloquent, exhaustive and formidably informed book is a work of genuine consequence. He's a physician-psychiatrist-gerontologist who also teaches and is Consultant to the U.S. Senate Co...
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Beautiful Swimmers by William Warner
William Warner exhibits his skill as a naturalist and as a writer in this Pulitzer Prize-winning study of the pugnacious Atlantic blue crab and of its Chesapeake Bay territory.
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The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan
The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence is a Pulitzer prize winning 1977 book by Carl Sagan. In it, he combines the fields of anthropology, evolutionary biology, ps...
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On Human Nature by E. O. Wilson
On Human Nature is a 1979 Pulitzer prize-winning book by the Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson. The book tries to explain how different characteristics of humans and society can be explained from the ...
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Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (commonly GEB) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas Hofstadter, described as "a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis C...
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Fin-de-Siècle Vienna by Carl E. Schorske
Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture, written by American cultural historian Carl E. Schorske won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. It has been described as a magnificent revel...
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The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
Tracy Kidder's non-fiction book, The Soul of a New Machine, chronicles the experiences of an engineering team racing to design a next generation computer under a blistering schedule and tremendous ...
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Is There No Place On Earth For Me? by Susan Sheehan
This book recounts the lonely, harrowing life of Sylvia Frumkin who is diagnosed schizophrenic. Is There No Place On Earth For Me? written by Susan Sheehan and published in 1982 by Houghton Miff...
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The Social Transformation of American Medicine by Paul Starr
The Social Transformation of American Medicine is a book written by Paul Starr and published by Basic Books in 1982. It won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction as well as the Bancroft P...
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The Good War by Studs Terkel
"The Good War": An Oral History of World War Two is a telling of the oral history of World War II written by Studs Terkel. The work won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. It is a firs...
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Common Ground by J. Anthony Lukas
The book traces the history of three families: the African-American Twymons, the Irish McGoffs and the Yankee Divers. It gives brief genealogical histories of each families, focusing on how the eve...
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Move Your Shadow by Joseph Lelyveld
Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White, written by Joseph Lelyveld and published by Times Books in 1985, won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction as well as the 1986 Los Angeles...
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Arab and Jew by David K. Shipler
Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land, written by David K. Shipler and published by Times Books in 1986, won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
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The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
The Making of the Atomic Bomb, a book written by Richard Rhodes, won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, a National Book Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award. The 900-page bo...
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A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan
A Bright Shining Lie is a book by Neil Sheehan, a former New York Times reporter who covered the Vietnam War. It is about U.S. Army retired Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann and the United States i...
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And Their Children After Them by Dale Maharidge, Michael Williamson
And Their Children After Them, written by Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson and published by Pantheon Books in 1989, won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.[1] It is about sharecro...
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The Ants by E. O. Wilson, Bert Hölldobler
This book is primarily aimed at academics as a reference work, detailing the anatomy, physiology, social organization, ecology, and natural history of ants. The Ants is a Pulitzer Prize-winning...
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The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power by Daniel Yergin
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power is Daniel Yergin's 800-page history of the global oil industry from the 1850s through 1990. The Prize benefited from extraordinary timing: publis...
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Lincoln at Gettysburg by Garry Wills
The book uses Lincoln's notably short speech at Gettysburg to examine his rhetoric overall. In particular, Wills compares Lincoln's speech to Edward Everett's delivered on the same day, focusing on...
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Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick
The book is equal parts history and eyewitness account, covering the collapse of the Soviet Union. Opening with the excavation of the corpses of men killed in the Katyn massacre, "Lenin's Tomb" beg...
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The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner
The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time winner of the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. this book on evolutionary biology written for the layperson by Jonathan Weiner in ...
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The Haunted Land by Tina Rosenberg
The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism written by Tina Rosenberg and published by Random House in 1995, won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the 1995 National B...
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Ashes to Ashes by Richard Kluger
Ashes To Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, The Public Health, And The Unabashed Triumph Of Philip Morris, written by Richard Kluger and published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1996, won the 1997...
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Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a 1997 book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1998 it won a Pulitze...
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Annals of the Former World by John McPhee
The book presents a geological history of North America, and was researched and written over the course of two decades beginning in 1978. It consists of a compilation of five books, the first four ...
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Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower
The book covers the Occupation of Japan by the Allies between August 1945 and April 1952, delving into topics such as Douglas MacArthur's administration, the Tokyo war crimes trials and Hirohito's ...
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Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan is a book by Herbert P. Bix on Emperor Hirohito, emperor of Japan from December 25, 1926 until his death on January 7, 1989, won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for ...
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Carry Me Home by Diane McWhorter
Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution, written by Diane McWhorter and published by Simon & Schuster in 2001, won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize an...
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A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power
"A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide is a book by Samantha Power, Professor of Human Rights Practice at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, which explores America's un...
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Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum
The book charts the history of the Gulag organization from its beginnings in the Solovki prison camp and the construction of the White Sea Canal through its explosive growth in the Great Terror and...
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Ghost Wars by Steve Coll
The book describes the CIA's efforts in Afghanistan to include the covert paramilitary programs against the Soviet Union and the Taliban. It also includes detailed descriptions of operations that a...
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Imperial Reckoning by Caroline Elkins
Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya written by Caroline Elkins, published by Henry Holt, won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
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The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 is a historical look at the way in which Al-Qaeda came into being, the background for various terrorist attacks and how they were investigated, and ...
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The Years of Extermination by Saul Friedlander
The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 is the second volume of Saul Friedlander's history of Nazi Germany and the Jews. It won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction i...
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Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon
The book describes the exploitation of black Americans after the end of the American Civil War. Blackmon presents evidence that slavery in the United States did not end with the Civil War, instead ...
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The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David Hoffman
A history of the end of the arms race describes the Soviet Union's development of an automatic retaliatory attack system, the United States's efforts to create space-based missile defenses, and the...
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The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
An assessment of cancer addresses both the courageous battles against the disease and the misperceptions and hubris that have compromised modern understandings, providing coverage of such topics as...
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The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction Winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Non-Fiction One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovati...
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Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King
Arguably the most important American lawyer of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court when...
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Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin
Recounts the decades-long saga of the New Jersey seaside town plagued by childhood cancers caused by air and water pollution due to the indiscriminate dumping of toxic chemicals.
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The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
A major book about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes Over the last half...
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Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick
Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS is a 2015 non-fiction book by the American journalist Joby Warrick. The book traces the rise and spread of militant Islam behind the Islamic State of Iraq and the Lev...
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Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City is a 2016 non-fiction book by the American author Matthew Desmond. Set in the poorest areas of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the book follows eight families...
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Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman
In recent years, America’s criminal justice system has become the subject of an increasingly urgent debate. Critics have assailed the rise of mass incarceration, emphasizing its disproportionate im...
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Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America by Eliza Griswold
Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction In Amity and Prosperity, the prizewinning poet and journalist Eliza Griswold tells the story of the energy boom’s impact on a small town at ...
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The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America by Greg Grandin
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE A new and eye-opening interpretation of the meaning of the frontier, from early westward expansion to Trump’s border wall. Ever since this nation’s inception, the idea ...
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The Undying: Pain, vulnerability, mortality, medicine, art, time, dreams, data, exhaustion, cancer, and care by Anne Boyer
WINNER OF THE 2020 PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NONFICTION "The Undying is a startling, urgent intervention in our discourses about sickness and health, art and science, language and literature, and m...
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