The 25 best Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction books
The 25 highest-ranked winners of a Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, biography, history or memoir 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 69 Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction books in all. How we rank
- 1
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer93.3Must-Read ScoreThe Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Siddhartha Mukherjee, an oncologist, set out to answer a patient's question: what exactly is she fighting?
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (2011)33 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2010NBCC Award (Nonfiction) finalist (2010)NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - 2
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City93.3Must-Read ScoreEvicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
In 2008 and 2009, sociologist Matthew Desmond moved into a trailer park on Milwaukee's south side, and then an inner-city rooming house, to live alongside the people he was studying.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (2017)NBCC Award (Nonfiction) winner (2016)NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st Century - 3
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 - 4
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York91.3Must-Read ScoreThe Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
Robert Moses never won an election, yet for forty years he was the most powerful man in New York.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (Biography) winner (1975)Modern Library 100 Best NonfictionTIME All-TIME 100 Nonfiction - 5
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer90.2Must-Read ScoreAmerican Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
The definitive biography of J.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (Biography) winner (2006)NBCC Award (Biography) winner (2005)#1 New York Times bestseller (5 weeks at #1) - 6
King: A Life90.1Must-Read ScoreKing: A Life
The first major biography of Martin Luther King Jr.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (Biography) winner (2024)NBCC Award (Biography) finalist (2023)Goodreads Choice (history biography) finalist (2023) - 7
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/1189.6Must-Read ScoreThe Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
How did 9/11 happen?
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (2007)National Book Award (Nonfiction) finalist (2006)NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st CenturyTIME All-TIME 100 Nonfiction - 8
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 - 9
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era88.8Must-Read ScoreBattle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
The single best history of the American Civil War, covering the whole era from the Mexican War in 1846 through Lincoln's assassination in 1865.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (History) winner (1989)NBCC Award (Nonfiction) finalist (1988)Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction - 10
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) - 11
Things in Nature Merely Grow87.9Must-Read ScoreThings in Nature Merely Grow
Novelist Yiyun Li and her husband had two sons and lost them both to suicide: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, and James in 2024, at nineteen.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (Memoir) winner (2026)National Book Award (Nonfiction) finalist (2025)Goodreads Choice (memoir autobiography) finalist (2025) - 12
There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America87.1Must-Read ScoreThere Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America
In America, hard work is supposed to keep a roof over your head.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (2026) - 13
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) - 14
Parting the Waters : America in the King Years 1954-6386.7Must-Read ScoreParting the Waters : America in the King Years 1954-63
The first volume of Taylor Branch's monumental history of the civil rights movement, covering 1954 to 1963: from the Montgomery bus boycott that made a young Martin Luther King Jr.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (History) winner (1989)NBCC Award (Nonfiction) winner (1988)National Book Award (Nonfiction) finalist (1989) - 15
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) - 16
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History86.1Must-Read ScoreThe Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
Elizabeth Kolbert, a New Yorker staff writer, sets out to explain the five mass extinctions in Earth's history and to argue that humans are now causing a sixth.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (2015)NBCC Award (Nonfiction) finalist (2014)Guardian 100 Best Books of the 21st CenturyGuardian 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time - 17
Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice85.8Must-Read ScoreLiliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice
In 1990, Liliana Rivera Garza, a twenty-year-old architecture student in Mexico City, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, who was never brought to justice.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (Memoir) winner (2024)National Book Award (Nonfiction) finalist (2023) - 18
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt85.7Must-Read ScoreThe Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
The first volume of Edmund Morris's three-part life of Theodore Roosevelt follows him from a sickly, asthmatic boy in 1850s New York to the man who became the youngest president in American history at forty-two.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (Biography) winner (1980)Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction - 19
Angela's Ashes85.7Must-Read ScoreAngela's Ashes
Frank McCourt was born in Brooklyn during the Depression, but his family moved back to Limerick, Ireland, where they lived in desperate poverty: a flooded slum, little food, children dying of illness, and a charming father who drank away every wage.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (Biography) winner (1997)#1 New York Times bestseller (22 weeks at #1) - 20
Native Nations: A Millennium in North America85.2Must-Read ScoreNative Nations: A Millennium in North America
Long before Europeans arrived, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations, and when Europeans did come, Native nations stayed powerful for centuries.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (History) winner (2025) - 21
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power85.1Must-Read ScoreThe Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power
Daniel Yergin's history of oil, from the first well in Pennsylvania in 1859 through John D.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (1992)#1 New York Times bestseller (1 week at #1) - 22
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention84.6Must-Read ScoreMalcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
Malcolm Little was a street hustler in Boston and Harlem who became, in prison, Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam's most famous minister.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (History) winner (2012)Pulitzer Prize (Biography) finalist (2012)National Book Award (Nonfiction) finalist (2011) - 23
Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City84.6Must-Read ScoreInvisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City
Andrea Elliott spent nearly a decade following Dasani Coates, a girl growing up in a New York City homeless shelter with her parents and seven siblings.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (2022) - 24
Blood in the Water84.5Must-Read ScoreBlood in the Water
In September 1971, nearly 1,300 prisoners at Attica Correctional Facility in New York took over the prison to protest inhumane conditions, holding guards hostage.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (History) winner (2017)National Book Award (Nonfiction) finalist (2016) - 25
The Guns of August84.5Must-Read ScoreThe Guns of August
Barbara Tuchman tells the story of the first month of World War I, from the funeral of Edward VII in May 1910, where nine kings rode together, to the Battle of the Marne in September 1914.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (1963)Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction
