The Award Tally
FictionNonfiction

Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

American Library Association (ALA)

An annual award presented by the American Library Association recognizing the best nonfiction book published in the United States the previous year, honoring outstanding writing and lasting contribution to the field.

Search through 1,818 books

2026

  1. Things in Nature Merely Grow

    Yiyun Li

    Won
  2. Baldwin, Styron, and Me

    Mélikah Abdelmoumen, translated by Catherine Khordoc

    Shortlisted
  3. There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

    Brian Goldstone

    Shortlisted

2025

  1. A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon

    Kevin Fedarko

    Won
  2. Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space

    Adam Higginbotham

    Shortlisted
  3. Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV

    Emily Nussbaum

    Shortlisted

2024

  1. We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America

    Roxanna Asgarian

    Won

  2. The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration

    Jake Bittle

    Shortlisted

  3. The Talk

    Darrin Bell

    Shortlisted

2023

  1. An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

    Ed Yong

    Won
  2. Constructing a Nervous System

    Margo Jefferson

    Shortlisted
  3. Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage

    Rachel E. Gross

    Shortlisted

2022

  1. A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance

    Hanif Abdurraqib

    Won

  2. Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619–2019

    Keisha N. BlainIbram X. Kendi

    Shortlisted
  3. Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness

    Kristen Radtke

    Shortlisted

2021

  1. Fathoms: The World in the Whale

    Rebecca Giggs

    Won

  2. Just Us: An American Conversation

    Claudia Rankine

    Shortlisted
  3. Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir

    Natasha Trethewey

    Shortlisted

2020

  1. Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster

    Adam Higginbotham

    Won
  2. Figuring

    Maria Popova

    Shortlisted
  3. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present

    David Treuer

    Shortlisted

2019

  1. Heavy: An American Memoir

    Kiese Laymon

    Won
  2. Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America

    Beth Macy

    Shortlisted
  3. The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border

    Francisco Cantú

    Shortlisted

2018

  1. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

    David Grann

    Shortlisted

  2. The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner

    Daniel Ellsberg

    Shortlisted

2017

  1. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

    Matthew Desmond

    Won
  2. Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America

    Patrick Phillips

    Shortlisted

  3. The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship

    Patricia Bell-Scott

    Shortlisted

2016

  1. Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs

    Sally Mann

    Won
  2. H is for Hawk

    Helen Macdonald

    Shortlisted
  3. The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World

    Andrea Wulf

    Shortlisted

2015

  1. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

    Bryan Stevenson

    Won
  2. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

    Elizabeth Kolbert

    Shortlisted
  3. Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin and Sadat at Camp David

    Lawrence Wright

    Shortlisted

2014

  1. The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

    Doris Kearns Goodwin

    Won
  2. Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

    Sheri Fink

    Shortlisted

  3. On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History

    Nicholas A. Basbanes

    Shortlisted

2013

  1. Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis

    Timothy Egan

    Won
  2. Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

    David Quammen

    Shortlisted

  3. The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death

    Jill Lepore

    Shortlisted

2012

  1. Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman

    Robert K. Massie

    Won
  2. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

    Manning Marable

    Shortlisted
  3. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

    James Gleick

    Shortlisted