| 2025 | Winner | A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America’s Disabled | Alex Green | Unknown |
| 2025 | Finalist | Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star | Mayukh Sen | W. W. Norton |
| 2025 | Finalist | Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution | Amanda Vail | Unknown |
| 2025 | Finalist | Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore | Ashley D. Farmer | Pantheon |
| 2025 | Finalist | Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford | Carla Kaplan | HarperCollins |
| 2025 | Longlist | Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America | Sam Tanenhaus | Random House |
| 2025 | Longlist | Constantine Cavafy: A New Biography | Gregory Jusdanis, Peter Jeffreys | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2025 | Longlist | Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson | Claire Hoffman | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2025 | Longlist | Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin | Sue Prideaux | W. W. Norton |
| 2025 | Longlist | William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love | Philip Hoare | Pegasus Books |
| 2024 | Winner | Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar | Cynthia Carr | Unknown |
| 2024 | Finalist | Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution: A History from Below | Jane Kamensky | W. W. Norton |
| 2024 | Finalist | Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers | Jean Strouse | Manchester University Press |
| 2024 | Finalist | Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People | Tiya Miles | Penguin Press |
| 2024 | Finalist | The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker | Amy Reading | Mariner Books |
| 2024 | Longlist | John Lewis: A Life | David Greenberg | Simon & Schuster |
| 2024 | Longlist | Monet: The Restless Vision | Jackie Wullschläger | Knopf |
| 2024 | Longlist | Reagan: His Life and Legend | Max Boot | Liveright |
| 2024 | Longlist | The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon | Adam Shatz | Macmillan |
| 2024 | Longlist | True Believer: Hubert Humphrey’s Quest for a More Just America | James Traub | Basic Books |
| 2023 | Winner | Winnie & Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage | Jonny Steinberg | HarperCollins |
| 2023 | Finalist | Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disruptor | Rachel Shteir | Yale University Press |
| 2023 | Finalist | Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong’s Rendezvous with American History | Yunte Huang | Liveright |
| 2023 | Finalist | King: A Life | Jonathan Eig | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2023 | Finalist | The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman’s Narrative | Gregg Hecimovich | Ecco |
| 2022 | Winner | G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century | Beverly Gage | Viking |
| 2022 | Finalist | Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life | Clare Mac Cumhaill, Rachael Wiseman | Unknown |
| 2022 | Finalist | Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century | Jennifer Homans | Random House Trade Paperbacks |
| 2022 | Finalist | The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family | Kerri K. Greenidge | Liveright |
| 2022 | Finalist | Up From the Depths: Herman Melville, Louis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times | Aaron Sachs | Unknown |
| 2021 | Winner | All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler | Rebecca Donner | Back Bay Books |
| 2021 | Finalist | Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser | Susan Bernofsky | Yale University Press |
| 2021 | Finalist | Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York | Alexander Nemerov | Penguin Publishing Group |
| 2021 | Finalist | Mike Nichols: A Life | Mark Harris | Penguin Books |
| 2021 | Finalist | Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America | Keisha N. Blain | Unknown |
| 2020 | Winner | Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World | Amy Stanley | Scribner |
| 2020 | Finalist | Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath | Heather Clark | Jonathan Cape |
| 2020 | Finalist | The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X | Les Payne, Tamara Payne | Liveright |
| 2020 | Finalist | The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s | Maggie Doherty | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |
| 2020 | Finalist | The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes | Zachary D. Carter | Random House |
| 2019 | Winner | The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth | Josh Levin | Little, Brown |
| 2019 | Finalist | A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II | Sonia Purnell | Penguin Press |
| 2019 | Finalist | Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century | Charles King | Doubleday |
| 2019 | Finalist | L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated Female Byron | Lucasta Miller | Knopf |
| 2019 | Finalist | Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century | George Packer | Knopf |
| 2018 | Winner | Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous | Christopher Bonanos | Henry Holt and Company |
| 2018 | Finalist | Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History | Yunte Huang | Unknown |
| 2018 | Finalist | Ma'am Darling: Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret | Craig Brown | Fourth Estate |
| 2018 | Finalist | The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created | Jane Leavy | Unknown |
| 2018 | Finalist | The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century | Mark Lamster | Unknown |
| 2017 | Winner | Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder | Caroline Fraser | Metropolitan Books |
| 2017 | Finalist | Gorbachev: His Life and Times | William Taubman | W. W. Norton |
| 2017 | Finalist | Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times | Ken Whyte | Unknown |
| 2017 | Finalist | The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography | Edmund Gordon | Unknown |
| 2017 | Finalist | The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek | Howard Markel | Pantheon |
| 2016 | Winner | Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life | Ruth Franklin | Liveright |
| 2016 | Finalist | Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary | Joe Jackson | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2016 | Finalist | Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey | Frances Wilson | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2016 | Finalist | Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White | Michael Tisserand | HarperCollins |
| 2016 | Finalist | Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story | Nigel Cliff | HarperCollins |
| 2015 | Winner | Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley | Charlotte Gordon | Random House Trade Paperbacks |
| 2015 | Finalist | Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America | T. J. Stiles | Knopf |
| 2015 | Finalist | Dietrich and Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives | Karin Wieland, Shelly Frisch | Unknown |
| 2015 | Finalist | Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth | Terry Alford | Oxford University Press |
| 2015 | Finalist | Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva | Rosemary Sullivan | HarperCollins |
| 2014 | Winner | Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh | John Lahr | W. W. Norton |
| 2014 | Finalist | Literchoor Is My Beat: A Life of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions | Ian S. MacNiven | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2014 | Finalist | Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson | S. C. Gwynne | Scribner |
| 2014 | Finalist | The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography | Miriam Pawel | Bloomsbury |
| 2014 | Finalist | William Wells Brown: An African American Life | Ezra Greenspan | Unknown |
| 2013 | Winner | Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World | Leo Damrosch | Yale University Press |
| 2013 | Finalist | Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven | John Eliot Gardiner | Knopf |
| 2013 | Finalist | Birth Certificate: The Story of Danilo Kiš | Mark Thompson | Cornell University Press |
| 2013 | Finalist | Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore | Linda Leavell | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2013 | Finalist | Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East | Scott Anderson | Anchor |
| 2012 | Winner | The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson | Robert A. Caro | Knopf |
| 2012 | Finalist | All We Know: Three Lives | Lisa Cohen | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2012 | Finalist | Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece | Michael Gorra | W. W. Norton |
| 2012 | Finalist | Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus: A Biography | Lisa Jarnot | University of California Press |
| 2012 | Finalist | The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo | Tom Reiss | Crown |
| 2011 | Winner | George F. Kennan: An American Life | John Lewis Gaddis | W. W. Norton |
| 2011 | Finalist | Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China | Ezra F. Vogel | Harvard University Press |
| 2011 | Finalist | Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life and Lost 1934-1961 | Paul Hendrickson | Knopf |
| 2011 | Finalist | Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution | Mary Gabriel | Little, Brown |
| 2011 | Finalist | Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention | Manning Marable | Viking |
| 2010 | Winner | How To Live, Or A Life Of Montaigne | Sarah Bakewell | Unknown |
| 2010 | Finalist | Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective And His Rendezvous With American History | Yunte Huang | W. W. Norton |
| 2010 | Finalist | Simon Wiesenthal: The Lives And Legends | Tom Segev | Doubleday |
| 2010 | Finalist | The Killing Of Crazy Horse | Thomas Powers | Vintage Books |
| 2010 | Finalist | The Secret Lives Of Somerset Maugham: A Biography | Selina Hastings | Random House |
| 2009 | Winner | Cheever: A Life | Blake Bailey | Vintage Books |
| 2009 | Finalist | Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone | Stanislao G. Pugliese | Unknown |
| 2009 | Finalist | Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor | Brad Gooch | Little, Brown |
| 2009 | Finalist | Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line | Martha A. Sandweiss | Penguin Press |
| 2009 | Finalist | Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector | Benjamin Moser | Oxford University Press |
| 2008 | Winner | The World is What it is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul | Patrick French | Knopf |
| 2008 | Finalist | Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching | Paula J. Giddings | HarperCollins |
| 2008 | Finalist | The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century | Steve Coll | Penguin Books |
| 2008 | Finalist | The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family | Annette Gordon-Reed | W. W. Norton |
| 2008 | Finalist | White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson | Brenda Wineapple | Knopf |
| 2007 | Winner | Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer | Tim Jeal | Faber & Faber |
| 2007 | Finalist | A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917–1932 | John Richardson | Pimlico |
| 2007 | Finalist | Edith Wharton | Hermione Lee | Knopf |
| 2007 | Finalist | Ralph Ellison: A Biography | Arnold Rampersad | Knopf |
| 2007 | Finalist | Thomas Hardy: the Time-Torn Man | Claire Tomalin | Viking |
| 2006 | Winner | James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon | Julie Phillips | St. Martin's Press |
| 2006 | Finalist | A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveler | Jason Roberts | Simon & Schuster |
| 2006 | Finalist | At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1965-1968 | Taylor Branch | Simon & Schuster |
| 2006 | Finalist | Flaubert: A Biography | Frederick Brown | Harvard University Press |
| 2006 | Finalist | The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher | Debby Applegate | Doubleday |
| 2005 | Winner | American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer | Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin | Knopf |
| 2005 | Finalist | Lee Miller: A Life | Carolyn Burke | Bloomsbury |
| 2005 | Finalist | Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson | Jonathan Coe | Picador |
| 2005 | Finalist | Mark Twain: A Life | Ron Powers | Free Press |
| 2005 | Finalist | Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln | Doris Kearns Goodwin | Simon & Schuster |
| 2004 | Winner | de Kooning: An American Master | Mark Stevens, Annalyn Swan | Knopf |
| 2004 | Finalist | Alexander Hamilton | Ron Chernow | Penguin Books |
| 2004 | Finalist | Chronicles: Vol. 1 | Bob Dylan | Simon & Schuster |
| 2004 | Finalist | Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart | John Guy | Houghton Mifflin |
| 2004 | Finalist | Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare | Stephen Greenblatt | W. W. Norton |
| 2003 | Winner | Khrushchev: The Man and His Era | William Taubman | W. W. Norton |
| 2003 | Finalist | A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates | Blake Bailey | Picador |
| 2003 | Finalist | Jonathan Edwards: A Life | George M. Marsden | Yale University Press |
| 2003 | Finalist | Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake | Carol Loeb Shloss | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2003 | Finalist | The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage | Paul Elie | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2002 | Winner | Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, Vol. II | Janet Browne | Unknown |
| 2002 | Finalist | Benjamin Franklin | Edmund S. Morgan | Viking |
| 2002 | Finalist | Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 3 | Robert A. Caro | Knopf |
| 2002 | Finalist | The Last American Man | Elizabeth Gilbert | Bloomsbury |
| 2002 | Finalist | Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music | Mark Zwonitzer with Charles Hirshberg | Unknown |
| 2001 | Winner | Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson | Adam Sisman | Penguin Publishing Group |
| 2001 | Finalist | Borrowed Finery: A Memoir | Paula Fox | Picador |
| 2001 | Finalist | Milking the Moon: A Southerner’s Story of Life on This Planet | Katherine Clark | Unknown |
| 2001 | Finalist | Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina | David Hajdu | Unknown |
| 2001 | Finalist | The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal | Barry Werth | Anchor |
| 2000 | Winner | Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan | Herbert P. Bix | HarperCollins |
| 2000 | Finalist | I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-1945 | Viktor Klemperer | Random House |
| 2000 | Finalist | Marcel Proust: A Life | Jean-Yves Tadie | Penguin Press |
| 2000 | Finalist | The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst | David Nasaw | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| 2000 | Finalist | The Monk in the Garden: The Lost and Found Genius of Gregor Mendel, the Father of Genetics | Robin Marantz Henig | Houghton Mifflin |
| 1999 | Winner | The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White | Henry Wiencek | St. Martin's Press |
| 1999 | Finalist | Coleridge: Darker Reflections | Richard Holmes | Hodder & Stoughton |
| 1999 | Finalist | Morgan: American Financier | Jean Strouse | Unknown |
| 1999 | Finalist | Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette | Judith Thurman | Bloomsbury |
| 1999 | Finalist | The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times | Susan E. Tifft, Alex S. Jones | Unknown |
| 1998 | Winner | A Beautiful Mind | Sylvia Nasar | Simon & Schuster |
| 1998 | Finalist | Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story | Amanda Vaill | Unknown |
| 1998 | Finalist | King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero | David Remnick | Picador |
| 1998 | Finalist | Rocket Boys: A Memoir | Homer H. Hickman Jr. | Unknown |
| 1998 | Finalist | Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. | Ron Chernow | Unknown |
| 1997 | Winner | Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II | James Tobin | University Press of Kansas |
| 1997 | Finalist | American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson | Joseph J. Ellis | Knopf |
| 1997 | Finalist | Virginia Woolf | Hermione Lee | Chatto & Windus |
| 1997 | Finalist | Walking in the Shade | Doris Lessing | Flamingo |
| 1996 | Winner | Angela's Ashes: A Memoir | Frank McCourt | Touchstone |
| 1996 | Finalist | Charles Ives: A Life in Music | Jan Swafford | W. W. Norton |
| 1996 | Finalist | Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn | David Hajdu | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 1996 | Finalist | Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography | Peter Conn | Cambridge University Press |
| 1996 | Finalist | The Last Happy Occasion | Alan Shapiro | University of Chicago Press |
| 1995 | Winner | Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson | Robert Polito | Vintage Books |
| 1995 | Finalist | Emerson: The Mind on Fire | Robert D. Richardson, Jr. | University of California Press |
| 1995 | Finalist | Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs and Declarations of Independence | John Hockenberry | Unknown |
| 1995 | Finalist | The Liars’ Club | Mary Karr | Viking |
| 1995 | Finalist | Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography | David S. Reynolds | Knopf |
| 1994 | Winner | Shot in the Heart | Mikal Gilmore | Penguin Books |
| 1994 | Finalist | D.H. Lawrence: The Story of a Marriage | Brenda Maddox | Simon & Schuster |
| 1994 | Finalist | Naturalist | Edward O. Wilson | Island Press |
| 1994 | Finalist | Toulouse-Lautrec | Julia Frey | Unknown |
| 1994 | Finalist | Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity | Neal Gabler | Knopf |
| 1993 | Winner | Genet: A Biography | Edmund White | Random House |
| 1993 | Finalist | A Different Person | James Merrill | Unknown |
| 1993 | Finalist | French Lessons | Alice Kaplan | Unknown |
| 1993 | Finalist | The Passion of Michel Foucault | James Miller | Unknown |
| 1993 | Finalist | W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 | David Levering Lewis | Henry Holt |
| 1992 | Winner | Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World | Carol Brightman | Methuen |
| 1992 | Finalist | Kissinger: A Biography | Walter Isaacson | Simon & Schuster |
| 1992 | Finalist | Looking for the Light: The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott | Paul Hendrickson | Unknown |
| 1992 | Finalist | The Rascal King: The Life and Times of James Michael Curley, 1874-1958 | Jack Beatty | Unknown |
| 1992 | Finalist | Truman | David McCullough | Simon & Schuster |
| 1991 | Winner | Patrimony: A True Story | Philip Roth | Jonathan Cape |
| 1991 | Finalist | Anne Sexton: A Biography | Diane Wood Middlebrook | Virago |
| 1991 | Finalist | Maus II | Art Spiegelman | Unknown |
| 1991 | Finalist | The Journals of John Cheever | John Cheever | Vintage Books |
| 1991 | Finalist | The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan | Robert Kanigel | Unknown |
| 1990 | Winner | Means of Ascent: Volume 2 of The Years of Lyndon Johnson | Robert A. Caro | Knopf |
| 1990 | Finalist | A Hole in the World: An American Boyhood | Richard Rhodes | Simon & Schuster |
| 1990 | Finalist | Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1847–1952 | T.H. Watkins | Unknown |
| 1990 | Finalist | Strong Drink, Strong Language | John Espey | Unknown |
| 1990 | Finalist | The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends 1880–1918 | Patricia O'Toole | Ballantine Books |
| 1989 | Winner | A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt | Geoffrey C. Ward | Harper & Row |
| 1989 | Finalist | Glenn Gould: A Life and Variations | Otto Friedrich | Unknown |
| 1989 | Finalist | God Gave Us This Country: Tekamthi and the First American Civil War | Bil Gilbert | Atheneum |
| 1989 | Finalist | Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician | Roger Morris | Henry Holt and Company |
| 1989 | Finalist | This Boy’s Life: A Memoir | Tobias Wolff | Picador |
| 1988 | Winner | Oscar Wilde | Richard Ellmann | Unknown |
| 1988 | Finalist | Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir | Paul Monette | Unknown |
| 1988 | Finalist | The Letters of T.S. Eliot, 1909-1922 | Valerie Eliot | Unknown |
| 1988 | Finalist | The Selected Correspondence of Kenneth Burke and Malcolm Cowley, 1915-1981 | Paul Jay | Unknown |
| 1988 | Finalist | Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an Age of Information | Robert Wright | Unknown |
| 1987 | Winner | Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World | Donald R. Howard | Dutton |
| 1987 | Finalist | An American Childhood | Annie Dillard | Picador |
| 1987 | Finalist | Don’t Tread on Me: The Selected Letters of S.J. Perelman | Prudence Crowther | Unknown |
| 1987 | Finalist | Private Domain | Paul Taylor | North Point Press |
| 1987 | Finalist | Timebends: A Life | Arthur Miller | Grove Press |
| 1986 | Winner | The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. I: 1902-1941 | Arnold Rampersad | Unknown |
| 1986 | Finalist | Dostoevsky: The Stir of Liberation, 1860–1865 | Joseph Frank | Princeton University Press |
| 1986 | Finalist | Maus: A Survivor’s Tale | Art Spiegelman | Pantheon |
| 1986 | Finalist | Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter | Theodore Rosengarten | William Morrow |
| 1986 | Finalist | Velázquez: Painter and Courtier | Jonathan Brown | Unknown |
| 1985 | Winner | Henry James: A Life | Leon Edel | Harper & Row |
| 1985 | Finalist | Brigham Young: American Moses | Leonard Arrington | Knopf |
| 1985 | Finalist | Giacometti: A Biography | James Lord | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 1985 | Finalist | Louise Bogan: A Portrait | Elizabeth Frank | Columbia University Press |
| 1985 | Finalist | Visible Light: Four Creative Biographies | Michael Lesy | Unknown |
| 1984 | Winner | Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850–1859 | Joseph Frank | Princeton University Press |
| 1984 | Finalist | Home Before Dark | Susan Cheever | Bantam Books |
| 1984 | Finalist | Josephine Herbst | Elinor Langer | Warner Books |
| 1984 | Finalist | One Writer’s Beginnings | Eudora Welty | Harvard University Press |
| 1984 | Finalist | Walt Whitman: The Making of a Poet | Paul Zweig | Penguin Books |
| 1983 | Winner | Minor Characters | Joyce Johnson | Pocket Books |
| 1983 | Finalist | Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just | Kenneth R. Manning | Oxford University Press |
| 1983 | Finalist | Eleni | Nicholas Gage | Unknown |
| 1983 | Finalist | The Roots of Treason: Ezra Pound and the Secret of St. Elizabeth’s | E. Fuller Torrey | Unknown |
| 1983 | Finalist | Thomas Carlyle: A Biography | Fred Kaplan | Cambridge University Press |