| 2026 | Winner | Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right | Laura K. Field | Princeton University Press |
| 2025 | Winner | Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power | Timothy W. Ryback | Knopf |
| 2024 | Winner | Residual Governance: How South Africa Foretells Planetary Futures | Gabrielle Hecht | Duke University Press |
| 2023 | Winner | Stars and Shadows: The Politics of Interracial Friendship from Jefferson to Obama | Saladin Ambar | Oxford University Press |
| 2022 | Winner | A World Without Soil: The Past, Present, and Precarious Future of the Earth Beneath Our Feet | Jo Handelsman | Yale University Press |
| 2021 | Winner | Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump | Jennifer Mercieca | Texas A&M University Press |
| 2020 | Winner | Whistleblowers: Honesty in America from Washington to Trump | Allison Stanger | Yale University Press |
| 2019 | Winner | Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President | Kathleen Hall Jamieson | Oxford University Press |
| 2018 | Winner | Awakening: How Gays and Lesbians Brought Marriage Equality to America | Nathaniel Frank | Harvard University Press |
| 2018 | Honorable mention | Climate of Capitulation: An Insider’s Account of State Power in a Coal Nation | Vivian Thomson | MIT Press |
| 2017 | Winner | Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government | Christopher H. Achen, Larry M. Bartels | Princeton University Press |
| 2017 | Honorable mention | Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World | Timothy Garton Ash | Yale University Press |
| 2017 | Honorable mention | ISIS: A History | Fawaz A. Gerges | Princeton University Press |
| 2016 | Winner | The Hillary Doctrine: Sex and American Foreign Policy | Valerie M. Hudson, Patricia Leidl | Columbia University Press |
| 2016 | Honorable mention | A Darkling Plain: Stories of Conflict and Humanity during War | Kristen Renwick Monroe with Chloe Lampros-Monroe, Jonah Pellecchia | Cambridge University Press |
| 2016 | Honorable mention | On Stalin's Team: The Years of Living Danerously in Soviet Politics | Sheila Fitzpatrick | Princeton University Press |
| 2015 | Winner | Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy | Francis Fukuyama | Macmillan |
| 2015 | Honorable mention | Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict | John B. Judis | Macmillan |
| 2015 | Honorable mention | Liberalism: The Life of an Idea | Edmund Fawcett | Princeton University Press |
| 2015 | Honorable mention | Why Government Fails So Often: And How It Can Do Better | Peter H. Schuck | Princeton University Press |
| 2013 | Winner | Out of the Mountains: The Coming of Age of the Urban Guerrilla | David Kilcullen | Oxford University Press |
| 2013 | Honorable mention | The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election | John Sides, Lynn Vavreck | Princeton University Press |
| 2012 | Winner | The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy | Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba,, Henry E. Brady | Princeton University Press |
| 2012 | Honorable mention | Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party | Geoffrey Kabaservice | Oxford University Press |
| 2012 | Honorable mention | The African American Electorate: A Statistical History | Hanes Walton, Jr., Sherman C. Puckett,, Donald R. Deskins, Jr. | CQ Press |
| 2008 | Winner | The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State | Noah Feldman | Princeton University Press |
| 2008 | Honorable mention | The Good Citizen: How a Younger Generation is Reshaping American Politics | Russell J. Dalton | CQ Press |
| 2008 | Honorable mention | The Powers to Lead | Joseph S. Nye, Jr. | Oxford University Press |
| 2008 | Honorable mention | Unconventional Wisdom | Karen M. Kaufmann, John R. Petrocik, Daron R. Shaw | Oxford University Press |
| 2007 | Winner | Constitutional Democracy: Creating and Maintaining a Just Political Order | Walter F. Murphy | Johns Hopkins University Press |
| 2006 | Winner | The Order of Genocide: Race, Power and War in Rwanda | Scott Straus | Cornell University Press |
| 2006 | Honorable mention | Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We The People Can Correct It) | Sanford Levinson | Oxford University Press |
| 2005 | Winner | The White House Looks South: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson | William E. Leuchtenburg | LSU Press |
| 2005 | Honorable mention | Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth | Michael J. Graetz, Ian Shapiro | Princeton University Press |
| 2004 | Winner | Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population | Valerie M. Hudson, Andrea M. den Boer | MIT Press |
| 2004 | Honorable mention | A New World Order | Anne- Marie Slaughter | Princeton University Press |
| 2003 | Winner | Identity in Democracy | Amy Gutmann | Princeton University Press |
| 2003 | Honorable mention | Science in the Private Interest | Sheldon Krimsky. | Rowman and Littlefield |
| 2002 | Winner | Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement | Selig Harrison | Princeton University Press |
| 2002 | Honorable mention | The Rise of Southern Republicans | Earl Black, Merle Black | Harvard University Press |
| 1998 | Winner | The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions | William G. Bowen, Derek Bok | Princeton University Press |
| 1997 | Winner | Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History | Rogers M. Smith | Yale University Press |
| 1996 | Winner | Our Children's Toxic Legacy | John Wargo | Yale University Press |
| 1995 | Winner | Moscow: Governing The Socialist Metropolis | Timothy J. Colton | Harvard University Press |
| 1995 | Honorable mention | Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, & the Soul of the Nation | Jennifer L. Hochschild | Princeton University Press |
| 1995 | Honorable mention | One For All: The Logic of Group Conflict | Russel Hardin | Princeton University Press |
| 1994 | Winner | Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China: Political Reform in the Deng Xiaoping Era | Merle Goldman | Harvard University Press |
| 1994 | Honorable mention | The Federal Civil Service System and the Problem of Bureaucracy: The Economics and Politics of Institutional Change | Ronald N. Johnson, Gary D. Libecap | University of Chicago Press |
| 1994 | Honorable mention | The Supreme Court Compendium: Data, Decisions, and Developments | Lee Epstein, Jeffrey A. Segal, Harold J. Spaeth, Thomas G. Walker | CQ Press |
| 1993 | Winner | Encyclopedia of Arms Control and Disarmament | Richard Dean Burns | Simon & Schuster |
| 1992 | Winner | The Vital South: How Presidents Are Elected | Earl Black, Merle Black | Harvard University Press |
| 1991 | Winner | A History of the Arab Peoples | Albert Hourani | Harvard University Press |