| 2026 | Winner | The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World | William Dalrymple | Bloomsbury |
| 2026 | Finalist | The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery | Siddharth Kara | St. Martin's Press |
| 2025 | Winner | Native Nations: A Millennium in North America | Kathleen DuVal | Random House |
| 2025 | Finalist | The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports | Michael Waters | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2025 | Finalist | Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War | Edda L. Fields-Black | Oxford University Press |
| 2025 | Finalist | Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery | Seth Rockman | University of Chicago Press |
| 2025 | Finalist | Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank | Justene Hill Edwards | Columbia University Press |
| 2024 | Winner | The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History | Ned Blackhawk | Yale University Press |
| 2024 | Finalist | Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights | Dylan C. Penningroth | Liveright |
| 2024 | Finalist | King: A Life | Jonathan Eig | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2024 | Finalist | Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia | Gary J. Bass | Knopf |
| 2024 | Finalist | Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World | Yepoka Yeebo | Bloomsbury |
| 2023 | Winner | Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War | Deborah Cohen | Random House |
| 2023 | Finalist | Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands | Kelly Lytle Hernández | W. W. Norton |
| 2023 | Finalist | The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family | Kerri K. Greenidge | Liveright |
| 2023 | Finalist | Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America | Pekka Hämäläinen | Liveright |
| 2023 | Finalist | G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century | Beverly Gage | Viking |
| 2022 | Winner | Surviving Katyń: Stalin's Polish Massacre and the Search for Truth | Jane Rogoyska | Oneworld |
| 2022 | Finalist | All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake | Tiya Miles | Random House |
| 2022 | Finalist | The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America | Noah Feldman | Basic Books |
| 2022 | Finalist | The Invention of Miracles: Language, Power, and Alexander Graham Bell's Quest to End Deafness | Katie Booth | Avid Reader Press |
| 2022 | Finalist | You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers | Amanda Frost | Beacon Press |
| 2021 | Winner | A Question Of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation's Founding to the Civil War | William G. Thomas III | Yale University Press |
| 2021 | Finalist | The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X | Les Payne, Tamara Payne | Liveright |
| 2021 | Finalist | Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All | Martha S. Jones | Basic Books |
| 2021 | Finalist | The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States | Walter Johnson | Basic Books |
| 2021 | Finalist | Those Who Forget | Géraldine Schwarz | Scribner |
| 2020 | Winner | Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter | Kerri K. Greenidge | Liveright |
| 2020 | Finalist | How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States | Daniel Immerwahr | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2020 | Finalist | Hitler | Brendan Simms | Basic Books |
| 2020 | Finalist | Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power | Pekka Hämäläinen | Yale University Press |
| 2020 | Finalist | El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America | Carrie Gibson | Atlantic Monthly Press |
| 2019 | Winner | The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War | Andrew Delbanco | Penguin Press |
| 2019 | Winner | The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke | Jeffrey C. Stewart | Oxford University Press |
| 2019 | Finalist | Asperger’s Children | Edith Sheffer | W. W. Norton |
| 2019 | Finalist | Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History | Steven J. Zipperstein | Liveright |
| 2019 | Finalist | Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom | David W. Blight | Simon & Schuster |
| 2018 | Winner | Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 | Stephen Kotkin | Penguin Press |
| 2018 | Finalist | The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America | Frances FitzGerald | Simon & Schuster |
| 2018 | Finalist | The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America | Edward L. Ayers | Viking |
| 2018 | Finalist | Ali: A Life | Jonathan Eig | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| 2018 | Finalist | Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder | Caroline Fraser | Metropolitan Books |
| 2017 | Winner | City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York | Tyler Anbinder | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| 2017 | Finalist | Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation’s Capital | Joan Quigley | Oxford University Press |
| 2017 | Finalist | Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 | Adam Hochschild | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| 2017 | Finalist | The Brazen Age: New York City and the American Empire - Politics, Art and Bohemia | David Reid | Harper |
| 2017 | Finalist | The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America | Ethan Michaeli | Chicago Review Press |
| 2016 | Winner | KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps | Nikolaus Wachsmann | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2016 | Finalist | The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 1908-1923 | Sean McMeekin | Penguin Press |
| 2016 | Finalist | Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America | T. J. Stiles | Knopf |
| 2016 | Finalist | The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II | Jan Jarboe Russell | Scribner |
| 2016 | Finalist | Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning | Timothy Snyder | Tim Duggan Books |
| 2015 | Winner | Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion | Harold Holzer | Simon & Schuster |
| 2015 | Finalist | Napoleon: A Life | Andrew Roberts | Viking |
| 2014 | Winner | Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin | Jill Lepore | Knopf |
| 2014 | Finalist | The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 | Christopher Clark | Allen Lane |
| 2013 | Winner | The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson | Robert A. Caro | Knopf |
| 2013 | Finalist | The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy | David Nasaw | Penguin Press |
| 2012 | Winner | Common Sense: A Political History | Sophia Rosenfeld | Harvard University Press |
| 2012 | Finalist | Conversions: Two Family Stories from the Reformation and Modern America | Craig Harline | Yale University Press |
| 2012 | Finalist | Pox: An American History | Michael Willrich | Penguin Press |
| 2011 | Winner | The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration | Isabel Wilkerson | Random House |
| 2011 | Finalist | Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in His Laboratory | Patrick Wilcken | Penguin Press |
| 2010 | Winner | The Greeks and Greek Love: A Bold New Exploration of the Ancient World | James Davidson | Random House |
| 2009 | Winner | Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World | Timothy Brook | Unknown |
| 2008 | Winner | Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America | Peter Silver | W. W. Norton |
| 2007 | Winner | Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787–2005 | James T. Campbell | Penguin Press |
| 2006 | Winner | The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism | Megan Marshall | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| 2005 | Winner | Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farm Workers, 1769-1913 | Richard Steven Street | Unknown |
| 2004 | Winner | River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West | Rebecca Solnit | Penguin Books |
| 2003 | Winner | The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade | Robert W. Harms | Basic Books |
| 2002 | Winner | A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany | Mark Roseman | Metropolitan Books |
| 2001 | Winner | Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 | Fred Anderson | Knopf |
| 2000 | Winner | Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II | John W. Dower | The New Press |
| 1999 | Winner | King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism In Colonial Africa | Adam Hochschild | Mariner Books |