National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), a professional organization of American book reviewers and critics
Annual award given by the National Book Critics Circle to honor the best nonfiction book of the year published in English, as selected by a board of professional literary critics and journalists.
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2025
- Won
- America, América: A New History of the New WorldShortlisted
Greg Grandin
- Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated TwinsShortlisted
Barbara Demick
- King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic MiscalculationShortlisted
Scott Anderson
- Shortlisted
No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson
Gardiner Harris
2024
- Won
- Shortlisted
Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood
Gretchen Sisson
- The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America’s Invasion of IraqShortlisted
Steve Coll
- Shortlisted
The Freaks Came Out To Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture
Tricia Romano
- Shortlisted
We’re Alone
Edwidge Danticat
2023
- Won
- Bottoms Up and the Devil LaughsShortlisted
Kerry Howley
- Ordinary NotesShortlisted
Christina Sharpe
- Shortlisted
The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War
Jeff Sharlet
- Shortlisted
Who Gets Believed? When the Truth Isn’t Enough
Dina Nayeri
2022
- Won
- Shortlisted
- Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the BorderlandsShortlisted
Kelly L. Hernández
- Fen, Bog & Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate CrisisShortlisted
Annie Proulx
- Shortlisted
Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between
Joseph Osmundson
2021
- Won
- Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler DynastyShortlisted
Patrick Radden Keefe
- Orwell’s RosesShortlisted
Rebecca Solnit
- The Family Roe: An American StoryShortlisted
Joshua Prager
- Shortlisted
The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth
Sam Quinones
2020
- Won
- Caste: The Origins of Our DiscontentShortlisted
Isabel Wilkerson
- Shortlisted
Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future
James Shapiro
- Shortlisted
She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs
Sarah Smarsh
- Shortlisted
2019
- Say Nothing: The True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern IrelandWon
Patrick Radden Keefe
- Shortlisted
Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future
Kate Brown
- No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill UsShortlisted
Rachel Louise Snyder
- Shortlisted
Out of the Shadows: Reimagining Gay Men's Lives
Walt Odets
- Shortlisted
The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution
Peter Hessler
2018
- Won
- Shortlisted
God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State
Lawrence Wright
- Shortlisted
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
- The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the BorderShortlisted
Francisco Cantú
- Shortlisted
2017
- The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape AmericaWon
Frances FitzGerald
- Shortlisted
- Border: A Journey to the Edge of EuropeShortlisted
Kapka Kassabova
- Shortlisted
Gulf: The Making of An American Sea
Jack Davis
- Shortlisted
2016
- Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American CityWon
Matthew Desmond
- Shortlisted
- Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of WarShortlisted
Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File
John Edgar Wideman
2015
- Won
- Shortlisted
Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America
Jill Leovy
- Shortlisted
Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America
Ari Berman
- SPQR: A History of Ancient RomeShortlisted
Mary Beard
- What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap DancingShortlisted
Brian Seibert
2014
- The Problem of Slavery in the Age of EmancipationWon
David Brion Davis
- Capital in the Twenty-First CenturyShortlisted
Thomas Piketty
- Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them FreeShortlisted
Héctor Tobar
- The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural HistoryShortlisted
Elizabeth Kolbert
- Shortlisted
The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book
Peter Finn and Petra Couvee
2013
- Won
- Shortlisted
- Thank You for Your ServiceShortlisted
David Finkel
- The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New AmericaShortlisted
George Packer
- Shortlisted
Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice
Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy
2012
- Won
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story
Jim Holt
2011
- Won
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
Pulphead: Essays
John Jeremiah Sullivan
- The Information: A History, a Theory, a FloodShortlisted
James Gleick
- To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918Shortlisted
Adam Hochschild
2010
- Won
- Apollo’s Angels: A History of BalletShortlisted
Jennifer Homans
- Shortlisted
- Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North KoreaShortlisted
Barbara Demick
- The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of CancerShortlisted
Siddhartha Mukherjee
2009
- The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of ScienceWon
Richard Holmes
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
Imperial
William T. Vollmann
- Shortlisted
Strength in What Remains
Tracy Kidder
- Shortlisted
The Hindus: An Alternative History
Wendy Doniger
2008
- The Forever WarWon
Dexter Filkins
- Shortlisted
From Colony to Superpower: US Foreign Relations Since 1776
George C. Herring
- The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American IdealsShortlisted
Jane Mayer
- This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil WarShortlisted
Drew Gilpin Faust
- Shortlisted
White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement
Allan Lichtman
2007
- Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the PresentWon
Harriet A. Washington
- American TranscendentalismShortlisted
Philip Gura
- Shortlisted
Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA
Tim Weiner
- Shortlisted
The World Without Us
Alan Weisman
- What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America 1815–1848Shortlisted
Daniel Walker Howe
2006
- Won
- Shortlisted
The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe V. Wade
Ann Fessler
- Shortlisted
The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East
Sandy Tolan
- Shortlisted
The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
- Shortlisted
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Michael Pollan
2005
- Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear DisasterWon
Svetlana Alexievich
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees
Caroline Moorehead
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
Robert Fisk
2004
- The Reformation: A HistoryWon
Diarmaid MacCulloch
- Shortlisted
- Blood Done Sign My Name: A True StoryShortlisted
Timothy Tyson
- Blue BloodShortlisted
Edward Conlon
- Shortlisted
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
David Shipler
2003
- Sons of MississippiWon
Paul Hendrickson
- Shortlisted
Gulag
Anne Applebaum
- Shortlisted
Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
- Shortlisted
Rising Up and Rising Down
William T. Vollmann
- Shortlisted
The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty
Caroline Alexander
2002
- A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of GenocideWon
Samantha Power
- American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade CenterShortlisted
William Langewiesche
- Brown: The Last Discovery of AmericaShortlisted
Richard Rodriguez
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
Chris Hedges
2001
- Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on PaperWon
Nicholson Baker
- Shortlisted
- Seabiscuit: An American LegendShortlisted
Laura Hillenbrand
- Shortlisted
The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair
Sam Roberts
- Shortlisted
2000
- Newjack: Guarding Sing SingWon
Ted Conover
- Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public HealthShortlisted
Laurie Garrett
- Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766Shortlisted
Fred Anderson
- Shortlisted
- Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold WarShortlisted
Frances FitzGerald
1999
- Won
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory
Patricia Hampl
- Shortlisted
The Black Room at Longwood: Napoleon’s Exile on Saint Helena
Jean-Paul Kauffmann
1998
- Won
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
The Bible as It Was
Roy Porter
- Shortlisted
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
Simon Winchester
1997
- Won
- Shortlisted
- How the Mind WorksShortlisted
Steven Pinker
- Shortlisted
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster
Jon Krakauer
- Shortlisted
The Bible as It Was
James Kugel
1996
- Bad Land: An American RomanceWon
Jonathan Raban
- Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip MorrisShortlisted
Richard Kluger
- Shortlisted
Great Books
David Denby
- Shortlisted
Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust
Daniel Goldhagen
- Shortlisted
The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years
Bernard Lewis
1995
- A Civil ActionWon
Jonathan Harr
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle
Madeleine Blais
- Shortlisted
Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder
Lawrence Weschler
1994
- The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World WarWon
Lynn H. Nicholas
- How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final ChapterShortlisted
Sherwin B. Nuland
- Shortlisted
My Own Country: A Doctor's Story
Abraham Verghese
- Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence ThomasShortlisted
Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson
- The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early AmericaShortlisted
John Putnam Demos
1993
- The Land Where the Blues BeganWon
Alan Lomax
- Shortlisted
Genie: An Abused Child’s Flight From Silence
Russ Rymer
- Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet EmpireShortlisted
David Remnick
- Shortlisted
The Last Panda
George B. Schaller
- Shortlisted
Whoredom in Kimmage: Irish Women Coming of Age
Rosemary Mahoney
1992
- Young Men and FireWon
Norman Maclean
- Breaking the Maya CodeShortlisted
Michael D. Coe
- Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in BrazilShortlisted
Nancy Scheper-Hughes
- Shortlisted
Home Fires: An Intimate Portrait of One Middle-Class Family in Postwar America
Donald Katz
- The Diversity of LifeShortlisted
Edward O. Wilson
1991
- Won
- Shortlisted
Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos: The Scientific Quest for the Secret of the Universe
Dennis Overbye
- Praying for SheetrockShortlisted
Melissa Fay Greene
- Shortlisted
Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools
Jonathan Kozol
- Shortlisted
Which Side Are You on? Trying to Be for Labor When It’s Flat on Its Back
Thomas Geoghegan
1990
- Won
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
Samba
Alma Guillermoprieto
- Shortlisted
The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath
Kevin Phillips
1989
- The Broken CordWon
Michael Dorris
- Shortlisted
- Among SchoolchildrenShortlisted
Tracy Kidder
- Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle ClassShortlisted
Barbara Ehrenreich
- Shortlisted
The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier
Amy Wilentz
1988
- Won
- Shortlisted
- Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War EraShortlisted
James M. McPherson
- EuropeansShortlisted
Jane Kramer
- Shortlisted
1987
- The Making of the Atomic BombWon
Richard Rhodes
- Shortlisted
- Democracy Is in the StreetsShortlisted
James Miller
- Shortlisted
The Genius of the People
Charles Mee
- Shortlisted
Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle
Stephen Jay Gould
1986
- Won
- Bird of Life, Bird of Death: A Naturalist’s Journey Through a Land of Political TurmoilShortlisted
Jonathan Evan Maslow
- Shortlisted
- Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the RevolutionShortlisted
Bernard Bailyn
- War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific WarShortlisted
John W. Dower
1985
- Won
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
House
Tracy Kidder
- Shortlisted
The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World
Elaine Scarry
- Shortlisted
The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens
Eva Keuls
1984
- Weapons and HopeWon
Freeman Dyson
- Brothers and KeepersShortlisted
John Edgar Wideman
- Shortlisted
Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Big Horn
Evan Connell
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
1983
- Won
- Shortlisted
Children of War
Roger Rosenblatt
- Distant Water: The Fate of the North Atlantic FishermanShortlisted
William W. Warner
- Shortlisted
Present History: On Nuclear War, Detente and Other
Theodore Draper
- Shortlisted
Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World
David S. Landes
1982
- Won
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
Stolen Lightning
Daniel Lawrence O’Keefe
- The Fate of the EarthShortlisted
Jonathan Schell
- Shortlisted
1981
- The Mismeasure of ManWon
Steven J. Gould
- Forms of TalkShortlisted
Erving Goffman
- National DefenseShortlisted
James Fallows
- Shortlisted
No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920
T. J. Jackson Lears
- Shortlisted
The Sage of Monticello: Jefferson and His Time, Volume Six
Dumas Malone
1980
- Walter Lippmann and the American CenturyWon
Ronald Steel
- Alice James: A BiographyShortlisted
Jean Strouse
- China MenShortlisted
Maxine Hong Kingston
- Shortlisted
- Walt Whitman: A LifeShortlisted
Justin Kaplan
1979
- Munich: The Price of PeaceWon
Telford Taylor
- African Calliope: A Journey to the SudanShortlisted
Edward Hoagland
- Shortlisted
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Brain
Douglas Hofstadter
- The Right StuffShortlisted
Tom Wolfe
- The White AlbumShortlisted
Joan Didion
1978
- Facts of LifeWon
Maureen Howard
- Won
- A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th CenturyShortlisted
Barbara W. Tuchman
- In Search of History: A Personal AdventureShortlisted
Theodore H. White
- Shortlisted
Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt
Barrington Moore
- Shortlisted
- Max Perkins: Editor of GeniusShortlisted
A. Scott Berg
- New York JewShortlisted
Alfred Kazin
- Shortlisted
Seeing Through Clothes
Anne Hollander
- The Snow LeopardShortlisted
Peter Matthiessen
1977
- Samuel JohnsonWon
W. Jackson Bate
- Coming Into the CountryShortlisted
John McPhee
- DispatchesShortlisted
Michael Herr
- Shortlisted
- Shortlisted
1976
- The Woman Warrior: Memoirs Of A Girlhood Among GhostsWon
Maxine Hong Kingston
- Shortlisted
Roots
Alex Haley
- Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for EqualityShortlisted
Richard Kluger
- Shortlisted
The Damnable Question: A Study in Anglo-Irish Relations
George Dangerfield
- Shortlisted
World of Our Fathers
Irving Howe with Kenneth Libo
1975
- Edith Wharton: A BiographyWon
R. W. B. Lewis