The 25 best National Book Award winners
The 25 highest-ranked National Book Award winners, fiction and nonfiction in our ranking of 3,056, scored on how much readers love them, their prize, best-list and bestseller record, and current buzz. We rank 85 National Book Award winners in all. How we rank
- 1
James99.0Must-Read ScoreJames
Huckleberry Finn, retold by the man on the raft.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (2025)National Book Award (Fiction) winner (2024)#1 New York Times bestseller (4 weeks at #1)52 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2024 - 2
Between the World and Me95.4Must-Read ScoreBetween the World and Me
Written as a letter to his 15-year-old son, this is Ta-Nehisi Coates explaining what it means to live in a Black body in America.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (2015)#1 New York Times bestseller (4 weeks at #1)107 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2015Pulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) finalist (2016) - 3
The Color Purple91.8Must-Read ScoreThe Color Purple
Rural Georgia, early 1900s.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1983)National Book Award (Fiction) winner (1983)NBCC Award (Fiction) finalist (1982)PBS Great American Read - 4
The Making of the Atomic Bomb91.3Must-Read ScoreThe Making of the Atomic Bomb
The full story of how the atomic bomb came to be, from the discovery around 1900 that atoms held unimaginable energy, through the physicists who raced to understand it, often fleeing Nazi Europe as they did, to the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, the first test at Trinity, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (1988)National Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (1987)NBCC Award (Nonfiction) winner (1987)Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction - 5
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This90.5Must-Read ScoreOne Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
In October 2023, a few weeks into the bombardment of Gaza, novelist Omar El Akkad posted a single line that went viral and became this book's title.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (2025)Goodreads Choice (nonfiction) finalist (2025) - 6
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany89.9Must-Read ScoreThe Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
William Shirer was an American journalist who reported from Berlin in the 1930s, and after the war he gained access to the captured archives of the Nazi government.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (1961)#1 New York Times bestseller (39 weeks at #1)TIME All-TIME 100 Nonfiction - 7
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid89.4Must-Read ScoreGödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
What does a mathematician's proof, a printmaker's impossible staircases and a composer's endlessly rising canons have in common?
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (1980)National Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (1980)TIME All-TIME 100 Nonfiction - 8
Master of the Senate88.8Must-Read ScoreMaster of the Senate
Book three of Robert Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson covers Johnson's twelve years in the Senate, from 1949 to 1960.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (Biography) winner (2003)National Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (2002)#1 New York Times bestseller (1 week at #1) - 9
Stamped From the Beginning88.4Must-Read ScoreStamped From the Beginning
Ibram X.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (2016)NBCC Award (Nonfiction) finalist (2016) - 10
Sophie's Choice87.4Must-Read ScoreSophie's Choice
Brooklyn, 1947.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Fiction) winner (1980)#1 New York Times bestseller (6 weeks at #1)One of the ten best-selling books of 1979 (Publishers Weekly)Modern Library 100 Best Novels - 11
A Bright Shining Lie86.9Must-Read ScoreA Bright Shining Lie
John Paul Vann was an Army officer who arrived in Vietnam in 1962 as an adviser, quickly saw that the war was being lost and lied about, and secretly fed the truth to young reporters, among them Neil Sheehan.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (1989)National Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (1988)Pulitzer Prize (History) finalist (1989)Pulitzer Prize (Biography) finalist (1989) - 12
The Right Stuff86.9Must-Read ScoreThe Right Stuff
Tom Wolfe's account of the test pilots who pushed jets past the sound barrier in the Mojave Desert, led by the legendary Chuck Yeager, and of the Mercury Seven astronauts chosen for America's first space program in the race against the Soviets.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (1980)Modern Library 100 Best NonfictionGuardian 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time - 13
The Stories of John Cheever86.6Must-Read ScoreThe Stories of John Cheever
Sixty-one stories from the writer known as the Chekhov of the suburbs, published over three decades in The New Yorker.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1979)National Book Award (Fiction) winner (1981)NBCC Award (Fiction) winner (1978) - 14
The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X86.4Must-Read ScoreThe Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X
In 1990, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Les Payne set out to interview everyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X: his siblings, classmates, street friends, cellmates, Nation of Islam figures, FBI informants and political leaders around the world.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (Biography) winner (2021)National Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (2020)NBCC Award (Biography) finalist (2020) - 15
Just Kids84.8Must-Read ScoreJust Kids
In 1967, Patti Smith, then twenty, arrived in New York with almost nothing and met Robert Mapplethorpe, a young art student.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (2010)19 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2010NBCC Award (Memoir) finalist (2010) - 16
The Underground Railroad84.6Must-Read ScoreThe Underground Railroad
Cora is an enslaved young woman on a cotton plantation in Georgia, an outcast even among the other enslaved people.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (2017)National Book Award (Fiction) winner (2016)51 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2016Booker Prize longlist (2017) - 17
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression83.7Must-Read ScoreThe Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
Andrew Solomon draws on his own experience of severe depression, which at its worst left him unable to get out of bed, and on years of interviews with patients, doctors, scientists and policymakers.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (2001)Pulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) finalist (2002)Guardian 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - 18
The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor83.4Must-Read ScoreThe Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor
This collection gathers all thirty-one of Flannery O'Connor's short stories, set mostly in the rural Georgia of the 1940s and '50s.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Fiction) winner (1972) - 19
From Here to Eternity83.1Must-Read ScoreFrom Here to Eternity
In 1941, Private Robert E.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Fiction) winner (1952)#1 New York Times bestseller (20 weeks at #1)One of the ten best-selling books of 1951 and 1953 (Publishers Weekly)Modern Library 100 Best Novels - 20
Arctic Dreams82.9Must-Read ScoreArctic Dreams
Barry Lopez spent years traveling in the Arctic, and here he writes about it: its strange light and landscapes, the animals that live there, from musk oxen and polar bears to narwhals and migrating birds, the explorers who came and often died, and the Inuit people who made it home.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (1986)NBCC Award (Nonfiction) winner (1986) - 21
JR82.1Must-Read ScoreJR
JR Vansant is an eleven-year-old sixth-grader on Long Island, and after a school field trip to Wall Street, he starts trading penny stocks from a pay phone.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Fiction) winner (1976) - 22
The Lives of a Cell82.1Must-Read ScoreThe Lives of a Cell
Lewis Thomas, a physician and medical researcher, wrote a column called "Notes of a Biology Watcher" for the New England Journal of Medicine.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (1975)Modern Library 100 Best NonfictionTIME All-TIME 100 Nonfiction - 23
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China81.8Must-Read ScoreAge of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China
Evan Osnos, a New Yorker correspondent in Beijing for eight years, tells the story of China's transformation through ordinary and extraordinary people: an entrepreneur who started an online dating site, an artist who became the country's best-known dissident, an economist who defected from Taiwan, and young people chasing wealth, truth and faith in a country changing at breakneck speed.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (2014)Pulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) finalist (2015) - 24
The Soul of a New Machine81.8Must-Read ScoreThe Soul of a New Machine
In the late 1970s, at a computer company called Data General, a team of young engineers led by the intense Tom West raced to build a new 32-bit minicomputer in about a year, working nights and weekends with little reward except the work itself.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (1982)National Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (1982) - 25
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II81.6Must-Read ScoreEmbracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
When Japan surrendered in 1945, its cities were in ruins and its people starving.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (2000)National Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (1999)NBCC Award (Nonfiction) finalist (1999)
