"[2] Awards are presented annually to books published in the U.S. during the preceding calendar year in six categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Memoir/Autobiography, Biography, and Criticism.
: An Existential Detective Story Sheri Fink Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital Winner Lawrence Wright Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief Finalist David Finkel Thank You for Your Service George Packer The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice David Brion Davis The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation Winner Thomas Piketty with Arthur Goldhammer (trans.)
Capital in the Twenty-First Century Finalist Hector Tobar Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle that Set Them Free Elizabeth Kolbert The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History Peter Finn and Petra Couvee The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book Sam Quinones Dreamland: The True Story of America’s Opiate Epidemic Winner Jill Leovy Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America Finalist Ari Berman Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America Mary Beard SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome Brian Seibert What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing Matthew Desmond Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City Jane Mayer Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right Viet Thanh Nguyen Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War Ibram X. Kendi Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America John Edgar Wideman Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File Frances FitzGerald The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America Winner Adam Rutherford A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes Finalist Kapka Kassabova Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe Jack Davis Gulf: The Making of An American Sea Masha Gessen The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia Steve Coll Directorate S: The C.I.A.
and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan Winner Lawrence Wright God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State Finalist Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure Francisco Cantú The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border Adam Winkler We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights Patrick Radden Keefe Say Nothing: The True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland Winner Kate Brown Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future Finalist Rachel Louise Snyder No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us Walt Odets Out of the Shadows: Reimagining Gay Men's Lives Peter Hessler The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution Tom Zoellner Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire Winner Isabel Wilkerson Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent Finalist James Shapiro Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future Sarah Smarsh She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs Walter Johnson The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States Clint Smith How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America Patrick Radden Keefe Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty Finalist Rebecca Solnit Orwell’s Roses Joshua Prager The Family Roe: An American Story Sam Quinones The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth Isaac Butler The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act Kelly Lytle Hernández Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands Finalist Joseph Osmundson Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between Annie Proulx Fen, Bog & Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis Ed Yong An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us Roxanna Asgarian We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America Kerry Howley Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs Finalist Dina Nayeri Who Gets Believed?
When the Truth Isn’t Enough Jeff Sharlet The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War Christina Sharpe Ordinary Notes