| 2026 | Winner | Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI | Karen Hao | Penguin Press |
| 2026 | Finalist | Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream | Megan Greenwell | HarperCollins |
| 2026 | Finalist | There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America | Brian Goldstone | Crown |
| 2026 | Finalist | Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America | Irin Carmon | Simon & Schuster |
| 2026 | Finalist | We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate | Michael Grunwald | Simon & Schuster |
| 2025 | Winner | They Came for the Schools: One Town's Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America's Classrooms | Mike Hixenbaugh | Mariner Books |
| 2025 | Finalist | Gaslight: The Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Fight for America's Energy Future | Jonathan Mingle | Island Press |
| 2025 | Finalist | On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America | Abrahm Lustgarten | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2025 | Finalist | Power Metal: The Race for the Resources That Will Shape the Future | Vince Beiser | Penguin Press |
| 2025 | Finalist | Systemic: How Racism is Making Us Sick | Layal Liverpool | Bloomsbury |
| 2024 | Winner | Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country | Patricia Evangelista | Random House |
| 2024 | Finalist | Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet | Ben Goldfarb | W. W. Norton |
| 2024 | Finalist | How to Make a Killing: Blood, Death, and Dollars in American Medicine | Tom Mueller | W. W. Norton |
| 2024 | Finalist | The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet | Jeff Goodell | Little, Brown |
| 2024 | Finalist | We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America | Roxanna Asgarian | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2023 | Winner | The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth | Ben Rawlence | St. Martin's Press |
| 2023 | Finalist | My Fourth Time We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World's Deadliest Migration Route | Sally Hayden | Melville House |
| 2023 | Finalist | The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World | Max Fisher | Little, Brown |
| 2023 | Finalist | The Other Side of Prospect: A Story of Violence, Injustice, and the American City | Nicholas Dawidoff | W. W. Norton |
| 2023 | Finalist | Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation | Linda Villarosa | Doubleday |
| 2022 | Winner | Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City | Andrea Elliott | Random House |
| 2022 | Finalist | Made in China: A Prisoner, an SOS Letter, and the Hidden Cost of America’s Cheap Goods | Amelia Pang | Algonquin Books |
| 2022 | Finalist | Planet Palm: How Palm Oil Ended Up in Everything and Endangered the World | Jocelyn C. Zuckerman | The New Press |
| 2022 | Finalist | The End of Bias: A Beginning: The Science and Practice of Overcoming Unconscious Bias | Jessica Nordell | Macmillan |
| 2022 | Finalist | The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die | Katie Engelhart | St. Martin's Press |
| 2020 | Winner | No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us | Rachel Louise Snyder | Bloomsbury |
| 2020 | Finalist | A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves: One Family and Migration in the 21st Century | Jason DeParle | Penguin Press |
| 2020 | Finalist | Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration | Emily Bazelon | Random House |
| 2020 | Finalist | She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement | Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey | Penguin Press |
| 2020 | Finalist | The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys across the Last Untamed Frontier | Ian Urbina | Knopf |
| 2019 | Winner | American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment | Shane Bauer | Penguin Press |
| 2019 | Finalist | Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America | Eliza Griswold | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2019 | Finalist | Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America | Beth Macy | Little, Brown |
| 2019 | Finalist | No Turning Back: Life, Loss and Hope in Wartime Syria | Rania Abouzeid | Oneworld |
| 2019 | Finalist | The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy | Anna Clark | Metropolitan Books |
| 2018 | Winner | The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia | Masha Gessen | Riverhead Books |
| 2017 | Winner | Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right | Jane Mayer | Doubleday |
| 2016 | Winner | Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America | Jill Leovy | One World |
| 2015 | Winner | The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas | Anand Giridharadas | W. W. Norton |
| 2014 | Winner | Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation | Dan Fagin | Bantam Books |
| 2013 | Winner | Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity | Katherine Boo | Random House |
| 2012 | Winner | Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers | Ellen Schultz | Portfolio |
| 2011 | Winner | The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State | Shane Harris | Unknown |
| 2010 | Winner | The Good Soldiers | David Finkel | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2009 | Winner | The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals | Jane Mayer | Doubleday |
| 2008 | Winner | Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy | Charlie Savage | Little, Brown |
| 2007 | Winner | The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 | Lawrence Wright | Knopf |
| 2006 | Winner | The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq | George Packer | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2005 | Winner | American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare | Jason DeParle | Viking |
| 2004 | Winner | The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military | Dana Priest | W. W. Norton |
| 2003 | Winner | High and Mighty: SUVs--The World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way | Keith Bradsher | PublicAffairs |
| 2002 | Winner | The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care | Nina Bernstein | Pantheon |
| 2001 | Winner | Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran | Elaine Sciolino | Simon & Schuster |
| 2000 | Co-winner | A Great Wall: Six Presidents and China: An Investigative History | Patrick Tyler | PublicAffairs |
| 2000 | Co-winner | About Face: A History of America's Curious Relationship with China, from Nixon to Clinton | James Mann | Knopf |
| 1999 | Winner | We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories From Rwanda | Philip Gourevitch | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 1998 | Winner | Anatomy of A Miracle: The End of Apartheid and the Birth of the New South Africa | Patti Waldmeir | W. W. Norton |
| 1997 | Winner | The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions | David Quammen | Scribner |
| 1996 | Winner | The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism | Tina Rosenberg | Random House |
| 1995 | Winner | A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class | Joseph Nocera | Simon & Schuster |
| 1994 | Winner | Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire | David Remnick | Random House |
| 1993 | Winner | Upon This Rock: The Miracles of a Black Church | Samuel Freedman | HarperCollins |
| 1992 | Winner | There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America | Alex Kotlowitz | Unknown |
| 1991 | Winner | The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America | Nicholas Lemann | Knopf |
| 1990 | Winner | From Beirut to Jerusalem | Thomas L. Friedman | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |