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 another category.
1960s
- 1962:The Making of the President, 1960 by Theodore White
- 1963:The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman
- 1964:Anti-intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter
- 1965:O Strange New World by Howard Mumford Jones
- 1966:Wandering Through Winter by Edwin Way Teale
- 1967:The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture by David Brion Davis
- 1968:Rousseau And Revolution, vol. 10 of The Story of Civilization, by Will and Ariel Durant.
- 1969:So Human An Animal by Rene Jules Dubos
- 1969:The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer
1970s
- 1970:Gandhi’s Truth by Erik H. Erikson
- 1971:The Rising Sun by John Toland
- 1972:Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 by Barbara W. Tuchman
- 1973:Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam by Frances FitzGerald
- 1973:Children of Crisis, vols. 2 and 3, by Robert Coles
- 1974:The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
- 1975:Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
- 1976:Why Survive? Being Old In America by Robert Neil Butler
- 1977:Beautiful Swimmers by William W. Warner
- 1978:The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan
- 1979:On Human Nature by Edward O. Wilson
1980s
- 1980:Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter
- 1981:Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture by Carl E. Schorske
- 1982:The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
- 1983:Is There No Place On Earth For Me? by Susan Sheehan
- 1984:The Social Transformation of American Medicine by Paul Starr
- 1985:The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two by Studs Terkel
- 1986:Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families by J. Anthony Lukas
- 1986:Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White by Joseph Lelyveld
- 1987:Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land by David K. Shipler
- 1988:The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
- 1989:A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan
1990s
- 1990:And Their Children After Them by Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson
- 1991:The Ants by Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson
- 1992:The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power by Daniel Yergin
- 1993:Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America by Garry Wills
- 1994:Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick
- 1995:The Beak of the Finch: A Story Of Evolution In Our Time by Jonathan Weiner
- 1996:The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism by Tina Rosenberg
- 1997:Ashes To Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year Cigarette War, The Public Health, And The Unabashed Triumph Of Philip Morris byRichard Kluger
- 1998:Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
- 1999:Annals of the Former World by John McPhee
2000s
- 2000: Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower
- The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene
- Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul
- 2001: Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix
- 2002: Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution by Diane McWhorter
- The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon
- War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals by David Halberstam
- 2003: “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power
- The Anthropology of Turquoise: Meditations on Landscape, Art, and Spirit by Ellen Meloy
- The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker
- 2004: Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum
- The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military by Dana Priest
- Rembrandt’s Jews by Steven Nadler
- 2005: Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll
- The Devil’s Highway: A True Story by Luis Alberto Urrea
- Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta
- 2006: Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins
- The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer
- Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt
- 2007: The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
- Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness by Pete Earley
- Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E. Ricks
- 2008: The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 by Saul Friedlander
- The Cigarette Century by Allan M. Brandt
- The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross
- 2009: Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon
- The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe by William I. Hitchcock
- Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age by Arthur L. Herman
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2010s
- 2010: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman
- The Evolution of God by Robert Wright
- How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities by John Cassidy
- 2011: Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
- The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas G. Carr
- Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.C. Gwynne
- 2010: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman
Christian Kresall 