The Award Tally
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PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

PEN America

An annual award honoring a book that exemplifies literary excellence combined with a commitment to accuracy and clarity in the reporting of science, encompassing the physical and biological sciences and natural history.

Search through 1,818 books

2025

  1. Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life

    Jason Roberts

    Won
  2. All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women’s Bodies and Why It Matters Today

    Elizabeth Comen

    Shortlisted

  3. Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World

    Kelly Clancy

    Shortlisted

  4. The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with Our Wild Neighbors

    Erika Howsare

    Shortlisted

  5. The Burning Earth: A History

    Sunil Amrith

    Shortlisted

2024

  1. California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline

    Rosanna Xia

    Won
  2. Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet

    Ben Goldfarb

    Shortlisted

  3. In the Blood: How Two Outsiders Solved a Centuries-Old Medical Mystery and Took on the US Army

    Charles Barber

    Shortlisted

  4. The Bathysphere Book: Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths

    Brad Fox

    Shortlisted

  5. Womb: The Inside Story of How It All Began

    Leah Hazard

    Shortlisted

2023

  1. Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey

    Florence Williams

    Won
  2. Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction

    David George Haskell

    Shortlisted

  3. The Big Bang of Numbers: How to Build the Universe Using Only Math

    Manil Suri

    Shortlisted
  4. Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage

    Rachel E. Gross

    Shortlisted

2022

  1. Fox & I: An Uncommon Friendship

    Catherine Raven

    Won
  2. Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World

    Lisa Wells

    Shortlisted

  3. Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive

    Carl Zimmer

    Shortlisted

  4. The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred

    Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

    Shortlisted

  5. The Memory Thief: And the Secrets Behind What We Remember — A Medical Mystery

    Lauren Aguirre

    Shortlisted

2021

  1. Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl

    Jonathan Slaght

    Won
  2. Fathoms: The World in the Whale

    Rebecca Giggs

    Shortlisted

  3. The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think

    Jennifer Ackerman

    Shortlisted

  4. The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy’s Vanishing Explorers

    Emily Levesque

    Shortlisted

  5. The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move

    Sonia Shah

    Shortlisted

2020

  1. Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves

    Frans de Waal

    Won
  2. Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition

    Patricia S. Churchland

    Shortlisted

  3. Losing Earth: A Recent History

    Nathaniel Rich

    Shortlisted

  4. On the Backs of Tortoises: Darwin, the Galapagos, and the Fate of an Evolutionary Eden

    Elizabeth Hennessy

    Shortlisted

  5. The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption

    Dahr Jamail

    Shortlisted

2019

  1. Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter

    Ben Goldfarb

    Won
  2. Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds

    Lauren Slater

    Shortlisted

  3. She Has Her Mother’s Laugh

    Carl Zimmer

    Shortlisted

  4. The Beginning of Everything

    Andrea Buchanan

    Shortlisted

  5. The World in a Grain

    Vince Beiser

    Shortlisted

2018

  1. The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine

    Lindsey Fitzharris

    Won
  2. American Eclipse: A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World

    David Baron

    Shortlisted
  3. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

    Robert Sapolsky

    Shortlisted

  4. Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life

    David Montgomery

    Shortlisted

  5. No One Cares About Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America

    Ron Powers

    Shortlisted

2017

  1. Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets

    Luke Dittrich

    Won
  2. Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History

    Dan Flores

    Shortlisted

  3. How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of a Private Spaceflight

    Julian Guthrie

    Shortlisted

  4. Lab Girl

    Hope Jahren

    Shortlisted

  5. The Dragon Behind the Glass: A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World’s Most Coveted Fish

    Emily Voigt

    Shortlisted

2016

  1. Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future

    Lauren Redniss

    Won

  2. Island on Fire: The Extraordinary Story of a Forgotten Volcano That Changed the World

    Alexandra Witze and Jeff Kanipe

    Shortlisted

  3. Rain: A Natural and Cultural History

    Cynthia Barnett

    Shortlisted

  4. The Boy Who Played with Fusion: Extreme Science, Extreme Parenting, and How to Make a Star

    Tom Clynes

    Shortlisted

  5. The End of Plenty: The Race to Feed a Crowded World

    Joel K. Bourne Jr.

    Shortlisted

2015

  1. War of the Whales: A True Story

    Joshua Horwitz

    Won

2014

  1. High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

    Carl Hart

    Won

2013

  1. Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior

    Leonard Mlodinow

    Won

  2. The Forest Unseen

    David G. Haskell

    Shortlisted

2012

  1. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

    James Gleick

    Won

  2. Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them

    Donovan Hohn

    Shortlisted

2011

  1. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

    Siddhartha Mukherjee

    Won
  2. Becoming Animal

    David Abram

    Shortlisted