The National Book Awards are given out by the National Book Foundation with the goal of enhancing the public's awareness of exceptional books written by fellow Americans, and to increase the popularity of reading in general.

For a complete list of winners visit the National Book Foundation

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family By Gordon-Reed, Annette 2008/09 - W. W. Norton & Company 9780393064773 Check the Library Catalog BookPage Notable Title 2008 National Book Award- Winner Nonfiction Historian and legal scholar Gordon-Reed presents this epic work that tells the story of the Hemingses, an American slave family and their close blood ties to Thomas Jefferson. ...More

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA By Weiner, Tim 2007/07 - Doubleday Books 9780385514453 Check the Library Catalog National Book Critics Circle Best Recommended Nonfiction Winner - 2007 National Book Award for Nonfiction A history of the CIA by a New York Times reporter, focusing on the agency's failures and delusions of grandeur. ...More

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl By Egan, Timothy 2006/09 - Mariner Books 0618773479 Check the Library Catalog Winner - 2006 National Book Award for Nonfiction BookPage Notable Title Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones in the darkest years of the Depression. ...More

The Year of Magical Thinking By Didion, Joan 2005/01 - Alfred A. Knopf 140004314X Check the Library Catalog Winner - 2005 National Book Award for Nonfiction BookPage Notable Title The author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and 11 other works chronicles the year following the death of her husband, fellow writer John Gregory Dunne, while the couple's only daughter, Quintana, lay unconscious in a nearby hospital suffering from pneumonia and septic shock. ...More

Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age By Boyle, Kevin 2004/09 - Henry Holt & Company 0805071458 Check the Library Catalog Winner - 2004 National Book Award for Nonfiction Boyle recounts the electrifying story of the sensational 1925 Ossian Sweet murder trial, an epic tale of one man trapped by the battles of his era's changing times, a city divided, and the advent of the civil rights struggle in Detroit. ...More

Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy By Eire, Carlos M. N. 2003/02 - Free Press 0743219651 Check the Library Catalog Winner - 2003 National Book Award for Nonfiction Narrated with the urgency of a confession, Waiting for Snow in Havana is both an ode to a paradise lost and an exorcism. More than that, it captures the terrible beauty of those times in readers lives when they are certain they have died--and then are somehow, miraculously, reborn. ...More

Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson By Caro, Robert A. 2002/04 - Knopf Publishing Group 0394528360 Check the Library Catalog Winner - 2003 ALA Non-Fiction Notable Selection Winner - 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Biography Winner - 2002 National Book Award for Nonfiction At the heart of this work is its unprecedented revelation of how legislative power works. Interweaving his narrative with a brilliantly astute and concise history of the Senate, Caro shows readers how political initiatives triumph or fail and how political genius functions. ...More

The Noonday Demon By Solomon, Andrew 2001/01 - Scribner Book Company 068485466X Check the Library Catalog Winner - 2002 ALA Non-Fiction Notable Selection Winner - 2001 National Book Award for Nonfiction With uncommon humanity, candor, wit, and erudition, award-winning author Solomon conducts a definitive narrative of incomparable range and resonance on his family secret of mental illness. Drawing on his own struggles with the illness and interviews with fellow sufferers, the author reveals as never before the complexities of the disease. ...More

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex By Philbrick, Nathaniel 2000/05 - Penguin Putnam 0670891576 Check the Library Catalog Winner - 2000 National Book Award for Nonfiction This true-life adventure tells the incredible story of the wreck of the whaleship "Essex"--an event that served as the inspiration for Melville's "Moby-Dick." Illustrations. ...More

Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II By Dower, John W. 2000/08 - W. W. Norton & Company 9780393320275 Check the Library Catalog Winner - 1999 National Book Award for Nonfiction A foremost historian examines Japan in the immediate, shattering aftermath of World War II, giving readers the rich and turbulent interplay between West and East, the victor and the vanquished, in a way never before attempted. 75 illustrations. ...More

Slaves in the Family By Ball, Edward 1998/12 - Ballantine Books 0345431057 Check the Library Catalog Winner - 1998 National Book Award for Nonfiction The moving, critically acclaimed story of one man's journey to find the descendants of the slaves who lived on his own family's plantation. "A work of breathtaking generosity and courage".--Pat Conroy. 48-page insert. ...More