| 2026 | Winner | Seeking Shelter: A Working Mother, Her Children, and a Story of Homelessness in America | Jeff Hobbs | Simon & Schuster |
| 2026 | Finalist | Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City | Bench Ansfield | W. W. Norton |
| 2026 | Finalist | By the Second Spring: Seven Lives and One Year of the War in Ukraine | Danielle Leavitt | Macmillan |
| 2026 | Finalist | Talk to Me: Lessons From a Family Forged by History | Rich Benjamin | Pantheon |
| 2026 | Finalist | They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals | Mariah Blake | Crown |
| 2025 | Winner | By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land | Rebecca Nagle | HarperCollins |
| 2025 | Finalist | Bringing Ben Home: A Murder, a Conviction, and the Fight to Redeem American Justice | Barbara Bradley Hagerty | Riverhead Books |
| 2025 | Finalist | Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life | Richard Beck | Crown |
| 2025 | Finalist | The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels | Pamela Prickett, Stefan Timmermans | Crown |
| 2025 | Finalist | We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky: The Seductive Promise of Microfinance | Mara Kardas-Nelson | Macmillan |
| 2024 | Winner | Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed | Dashka Slater | Macmillan |
| 2024 | Finalist | American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15 | Cameron McWhirter, Zusha Elinson | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2024 | Finalist | Blood Farm: The Explosive Big Pharma Scandal that Altered the AIDS Crisis | Cara McGoogan | Unknown |
| 2024 | Finalist | Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State | Kerry Howley | Knopf |
| 2024 | Finalist | The Lost Sons of Omaha: Two Young Men in an American Tragedy | Joe Sexton | Simon & Schuster |
| 2023 | Winner | Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation | Linda Villarosa | Doubleday |
| 2023 | Finalist | His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice | Robert Samuels, Toluse Olorunnipa | Viking |
| 2023 | Finalist | It Was Vulgar & It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic | Jack Lowery | Bold Type Books |
| 2023 | Finalist | Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us | Rachel Aviv | Macmillan |
| 2023 | Finalist | Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America’s Woods | Lyndsie Bourgon | Little, Brown Spark |
| 2022 | Winner | Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City | Andrea Elliott | Random House |
| 2022 | Finalist | Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty | Patrick Radden Keefe | Doubleday |
| 2022 | Finalist | The End of Bias: A Beginning: The Science and Practice of Overcoming Unconscious Bias | Jessica Nordell | Macmillan |
| 2022 | Finalist | The Family Roe: An American Story | Joshua Prager | W. W. Norton |
| 2022 | Finalist | The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice | Scott Ellsworth | Dutton |
| 2021 | Winner | After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America | Jessica Goudeau | Viking |
| 2021 | Finalist | Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents | Isabel Wilkerson | Random House |
| 2021 | Finalist | Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State | Barton Gellman | Penguin Press |
| 2021 | Finalist | Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism | Seyward Darby | Little, Brown |
| 2021 | Finalist | We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence | Becky Cooper | Grand Central Publishing |
| 2020 | Winner | An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago | Alex Kotlowitz | Nan A. Talese |
| 2020 | Finalist | Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promises | Jodie Adams Kirshner | Macmillan |
| 2020 | Finalist | Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration | Emily Bazelon | Random House |
| 2020 | Finalist | Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness | Jennifer Berry Hawes | Macmillan |
| 2020 | Finalist | The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America | Margaret O'Mara | Penguin Press |
| 2019 | Winner | American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment | Shane Bauer | Penguin Press |
| 2019 | Finalist | American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts | Chris McGreal | PublicAffairs |
| 2019 | Finalist | Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth | Sarah Smarsh | Scribner |
| 2019 | Finalist | In the Enemy's House: The Secret Saga of the FBI Agent and the Code Breaker Who Caught the Russian Spies | Howard Blum | HarperCollins |
| 2019 | Finalist | Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown | Lauren Hilgers | Crown |
| 2018 | Winner | Janesville: An American Story | Amy Goldstein | Simon & Schuster |
| 2018 | Finalist | American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West | Nate Blakeslee | Crown |
| 2018 | Finalist | Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century | Jessica Bruder | W. W. Norton |
| 2018 | Finalist | The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants And the Making of an American Life | Lauren Markham | Crown |
| 2018 | Finalist | The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom | Helen Thorpe | Simon & Schuster |
| 2017 | Winner | Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives | Gary Younge | Unknown |
| 2017 | Finalist | Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right | Jane Mayer | Doubleday |
| 2017 | Finalist | Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right | Arlie Russell Hochschild | The New Press |
| 2017 | Finalist | The Great Suppression: Voting Rights, Corporate Cash, and the Conservative Assault on Democracy | Zachary Roth | Crown |
| 2017 | Finalist | White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America | Nancy Isenberg | Viking |
| 2016 | Winner | Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War | Susan Southard | Viking |
| 2016 | Finalist | $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America | Kathryn J. Edin, H. Luke Shaefer | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| 2016 | Finalist | A Field Philosopher's Guide to Fracking: How One Texas Town Stood Up to Big Oil and Gas | Adam Briggle | Liveright |
| 2016 | Finalist | How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy | Stephen Witt | Viking |
| 2016 | Finalist | The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools? | Dale Russakoff | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| 2015 | Winner | The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan | Jenny Nordberg | Crown |
| 2015 | Finalist | Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream | Joshua Davis | Macmillan |
| 2014 | Winner | Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital | Sheri Fink | Crown |
| 2014 | Finalist | The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster | Jonathan M. Katz | Palgrave Macmillan |
| 2013 | Winner | Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity | Andrew Solomon | Scribner |
| 2013 | Finalist | Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz | Cynthia Carr | Bloomsbury |
| 2012 | Winner | The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White | Daniel J. Sharfstein | Viking |
| 2012 | Finalist | Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention | Manning Marable | Viking |
| 2011 | Winner | The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam | Eliza Griswold | Macmillan |
| 2011 | Finalist | Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food | Paul Greenberg | Penguin Press |
| 2011 | Finalist | Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class | Jefferson Cowie | The New Press |
| 2011 | Finalist | The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer | Siddhartha Mukherjee | Scribner |
| 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 | The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court | Jeffrey Toobin | Doubleday |
| 2007 | Winner | The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 | Lawrence Wright | Knopf |
| 2006 | Winner | Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town | Nate Blakeslee | PublicAffairs |
| 2005 | Winner | Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War | Evan Wright | G. P. Putnam's Sons |
| 2004 | Winner | They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967 | David Maraniss | Simon & Schuster |
| 2003 | Winner | "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide | Samantha Power | Basic Books |
| 2002 | Winner | Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution | Diane McWhorter | Simon & Schuster |
| 2001 | Winner | The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst | David Nasaw | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| 2000 | Winner | A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century | Witold Rybczynski | Scribner |
| 1999 | Winner | All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery | Henry Mayer | W. W. Norton |