National Book Critics Circle Award - Autobiography

2009

Somewhere Towards the End Winner

Diana Athill

Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love

Debra Gwartney

Lit

Mary Karr

Enemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America

Kati Marton

City Boy

Edmund White

2008

My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq Winner

Ariel Sabar

Why I Came West

Rick Bass

The House On Sugar Beach

Helene Cooper

The Bishop’s Daughter

Honor Moore

The Eaves Of Heaven

Andrew X. Pham

2007

Brother, I'm Dying Winner

Edwidge Danticat

Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone

Joshua Clark

The Journals of Joyce Carol Oates, 19731982

Joyce Carol Oates

Writing in an Age of Silence

Sara Paretsky

Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption and Death in Putin's Russia

Anna Politkovskaya

2006

The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million Winner

Daniel Mendelsohn

The Afterlife

Donald Antrim

Fun Home

Alison Bechdel

Stuart: A Life Backwards

Alexander Masters

Strange Piece of Paradise

Teri Jentz

2005

Them: A Memoir of Parents Winner

Francine du Plessix Gray

The Year of Magical Thinking

Joan Didion

Fat Girl: A True Story

Judith Moore

Istanbul: Memories and the City

Orhan Pamuk

Two Lives

Vikram Seth

Before 2005, the award was for Biography/Autobiography.

2004

• De Kooning: An American Master Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan Winner
• Alexander Hamilton Ron Chernow
• Chronicles Vol. 1 Bob Dylan
• Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakepeare Stephen Greenblatt
• Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart John Guy

2003

• Krushchev: The Man and his era William Taubman Winner
• A Tragic Honesty: The Life and work of Richard Yates Blake Bailey
• The Life you save may be your own: An American pilgrimage Paul Elie
• Jonathan Edwards George Marsden
• Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake Carol Loeb Shloss

2002

• Charles Darwin: The Power of place vol. 2 Janet Browne Winner
• Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson vol. 3 Robert A. Caro
• The Last American man Elizabeth Gilbert
• Benjamin Franklin Edmund S. Morgan
• Will you miss me when I’m gone? The Carter Family and their legacy in American Music Mark Zwonitzer with Charles Hirshberg

2001

• Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the life of Dr. Johnson Adam Sisman Winner
• Borrowed finery: A Memoir Paula Fox
• Positively 4th Street: The Lives and times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña David Hajdu
• Milking the moon: A Southerner's story of life on this planet Katherine Clark
• The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary life shattered by scandal Barry Werth

• 2000 Hirohito and the making of modern Japan Herbert P. Bix
• 1999 The Hairstons: An American family in black and white Henry Wiencek
• 1998 A beautiful mind : a biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr., winner of the Nobel Prize in economics Sylvia Nasar
• 1997 Ernie Pyle's war: America's eyewitness to World War II James Tobin
• 1996 Angela's ashes Frank McCourt
• 1995 Savage art: A Biography of Jim Thompson Robert Polito
• 1994 Shot in the heart Mikal Gilmore
• 1993 Genet Edmund White
• 1992 Writing dangerously: Mary McCarthy and her world Carol Brightman
• 1991Patrimony: A True story Philip Roth
• 1990 Means of ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. II Robert A. Caro