National Book Awards - Non-Fiction

2009

The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt Winner

T. J. Stiles (Alfred A. Knopf)

Following the Water: A Hydromancer’s Notebook

David M. Carroll (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species

Sean B. Carroll (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City

Greg Grandin (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt)

The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy

Adrienne Mayor (Princeton University Press)

2008

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family Winner

Annette Gordon-Reed (W.W. Norton & Company)

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War

Drew Gilpin Faust (Alfred A. Knopf)

The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals

Jane Mayer, (Doubleday)

Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives

Jim Sheeler (The Penguin Press)

The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order

Joan Wickersham (Harcourt)

2007

• Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA Tim Weiner (Doubleday)
• Brother, I’m Dying Edwidge Danticat (Knopf)
• God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything Christopher Hitchens (Twelve/HBG USA)
• Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution Woody Holton (Hill and Wang/FSG)
• Ralph Ellison: A Biography Arnold Rampersad (Knopf)

• 2006 The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl Timothy Egan
• 2005 The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion
• 2004 Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age Kevin Boyle
• 2003 Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy Carlos Eire
• 2002 The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate Robert A. Caro
• 2001The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression Andrew Solomon
• 2000 In the heart of the sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex Nathaniel Philbrick
• 1999 Embracing defeat: Japan in the wake of World War II John W. Dower
• 1998 Slaves in the family Edward Ball
• 1997 American Sphinx: the character of Thomas Jefferson Joseph Ellis
• 1996 An American requiem: God, my father, and the war that came between us James Carroll
• 1995 Facing Europe’s ghosts Tina Rosenberg
• 1994 How we die Sherwin B. Nuland
• 1993 United States: Essays 1952-1992 Gore Vidal
• 1992 Becoming a man: half a life story Paul Monette
• 1991 Freedom Orlando Patterson
• 1990 The House of Morgan Ron Chernow