| 2025 | Winner | King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion, and Catastrophic Miscalculation | Scott Anderson | Doubleday |
| 2025 | Finalist | America, América: A New History of the New World | Greg Grandin | Penguin Press |
| 2025 | Finalist | Baldwin: A Love Story | Nicholas Boggs | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2025 | Finalist | Mother Mary Comes to Me | Arundhati Roy | Scribner |
| 2025 | Finalist | A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck | Sophie Elmhirst | Riverhead Books |
| 2025 | Finalist | Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People | Imani Perry | Ecco |
| 2024 | Winner | Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space | Adam Higginbotham | Simon & Schuster |
| 2024 | Finalist | The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq | Steve Coll | Penguin Press |
| 2024 | Finalist | The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise | Olivia Laing | Knopf |
| 2024 | Finalist | Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America | Shefali Luthra | Doubleday |
| 2024 | Finalist | Another Word for Love: A Memoir | Carvell Wallace | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2024 | Finalist | Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir | Tessa Hulls | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2023 | Winner | Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino.” | Héctor Tobar | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2023 | Finalist | Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China's Cultural Revolution, | Tania Branigan | W. W. Norton |
| 2023 | Finalist | Mr. B: George Balanchine's Twentieth Century | Jennifer Homans | Random House |
| 2023 | Finalist | Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom | Ilyon Woo | Simon & Schuster |
| 2023 | Finalist | How Not to Kill Yourself: A Portrait of the Suicidal Mind | Clancy Martin | Pantheon |
| 2023 | Finalist | How to Say Babylon: A Memoir | Safiya Sinclair | 37 Ink |
| 2023 | Finalist | Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century | Jennifer Homans | Random House Trade Paperbacks |
| 2022 | Winner | In Sensorium | Tanaïs | Ecco |
| 2022 | Finalist | By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow's Legal Executioners | Margaret A. Burnham | W. W. Norton |
| 2022 | Finalist | An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us | Ed Yong | Random House |
| 2022 | Finalist | These Precious Days: Essays | Ann Patchett | Harper |
| 2022 | Finalist | The 1619 Project | Nikole Hannah-Jones et al. | One World |
| 2022 | Finalist | The Facemaker | Lindsey Fitzharris | Dutton |
| 2022 | Finalist | The 1619 Project | Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman, Jake Silverstein | Unknown |
| 2021 | Winner | Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir | Brian Broome | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| 2021 | Finalist | People Love Dead Jews: Reports From a Haunted Present | Dara Horn | W. W. Norton |
| 2021 | Finalist | All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake | Tiya Miles | Random House |
| 2021 | Finalist | Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life | Katherine E. Standefer | Little, Brown |
| 2021 | Finalist | Horizontal Vertigo | Juan Villoro, trans. Alfred MacAdam | Pantheon |
| 2021 | Finalist | Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness | Kristen Radtke | Pantheon |
| 2021 | Finalist | Horizontal Vertigo: A City Called Mexico | Juan Villoro | Pantheon |
| 2020 | Winner | Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream | Mychal Denzel Smith | Bold Type Books |
| 2020 | Finalist | A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes | Eric Jay Dolin | Liveright |
| 2020 | Finalist | Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents | Isabel Wilkerson | Random House |
| 2020 | Finalist | Fathoms: The World in the Whale | Rebecca Giggs | Simon & Schuster |
| 2020 | Finalist | The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power | Deirdre Mask | St. Martin's Press |
| 2020 | Finalist | World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments | Aimee Nezhukumatathil | Milkweed Editions |
| 2019 | Winner | How We Fight for Our Lives: A Memoir | Saeed Jones | Simon & Schuster |
| 2019 | Finalist | Say Nothing: A True Story Of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland | Patrick Radden Keefe | William Collins |
| 2019 | Finalist | No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us | Rachel Louise Snyder | Bloomsbury |
| 2019 | Finalist | The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You | Dina Nayeri | Catapult |
| 2019 | Finalist | When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back | Naja Marie Aidt, trans. Denise Newman | Coffee House Press |
| 2019 | Finalist | Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest | Hanif Abdurraqib | University of Texas Press |
| 2019 | Finalist | When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back: Carl's Book | Naja Marie Aidt | Unknown |
| 2018 | Winner | Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays) | Rebecca Solnit | Haymarket Books |
| 2018 | Finalist | American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment | Shane Bauer | Penguin Press |
| 2018 | Finalist | Heavy: An American Memoir | Kiese Laymon | Scribner |
| 2018 | Finalist | Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth | Sarah Smarsh | Scribner |
| 2018 | Finalist | Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America | Beth Macy | Little, Brown |
| 2018 | Finalist | The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America | Timothy Snyder | Tim Duggan Books |
| 2017 | Winner | The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea | Jack E. Davis | Liveright |
| 2017 | Finalist | Henry David Thoreau: A Life | Laura Dassow Walls | University of Chicago Press |
| 2017 | Finalist | The Seeds of Life: From Aristotle to da Vinci, from Sharks' Teeth to Frogs' Pants, the Long and Strange Quest to Discover Where Babies Come | Edward Dolnick | Basic Books |
| 2017 | Finalist | Priestdaddy: A Memoir | Patricia Lockwood | Riverhead Books |
| 2017 | Finalist | Tell Me How It Ends | Valeria Luiselli, trans. Lizzie Davis | Coffee House Press |
| 2017 | Finalist | The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South | Michael W. Twitty | Amistad |
| 2017 | Finalist | Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions | Valeria Luiselli | Coffee House Press |
| 2016 | Winner | In the Darkroom | Susan Faludi | Metropolitan Books |
| 2016 | Finalist | Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South | Beth Macy | Little, Brown |
| 2016 | Finalist | Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City | Matthew Desmond | Crown |
| 2016 | Finalist | Hillbilly Elegy | J. D. Vance | Harper |
| 2016 | Finalist | At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails | Sarah Bakewell | Other Press |
| 2016 | Finalist | The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America | Michael Eric Dyson | Mariner Books |
| 2016 | Finalist | Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis | JD Vance | William Collins |
| 2015 | Winner | Between the World and Me | Ta-Nehisi Coates | Spiegel & Grau |
| 2015 | Finalist | H Is for Hawk | Helen Macdonald | Jonathan Cape |
| 2015 | Finalist | Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers | Simon Winchester | Unknown |
| 2015 | Finalist | The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916–1931 | Adam Tooze | Penguin Press |
| 2015 | Finalist | The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science | Andrea Wulf | Knopf |
| 2015 | Finalist | Whirlwind: The American Revolution and the War That Won It | John Ferling | Bloomsbury |
| 2014 | Winner | Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? | Roz Chast | Bloomsbury USA |
| 2014 | Finalist | Capital in the Twenty-First Century | Thomas Piketty | Harvard University Press |
| 2014 | Finalist | Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World | Leo Damrosch | Yale University Press |
| 2014 | Finalist | Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption | Bryan Stevenson | Spiegel & Grau |
| 2014 | Finalist | The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science | Armand Marie Leroi | Bloomsbury |
| 2014 | Finalist | The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History | Elizabeth Kolbert | Henry Holt |