| 2026 | Winner | Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution | Amanda Vaill | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2026 | Finalist | The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford | James McWilliams | Unknown |
| 2026 | Finalist | True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen | Lance Richardson | Unknown |
| 2025 | Winner | Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life | Jason Roberts | Random House |
| 2025 | Finalist | John Lewis: A Life | David Greenberg | Simon & Schuster |
| 2025 | Finalist | The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker | Amy Reading | Mariner Books |
| 2024 | Co-winner | King: A Life | Jonathan Eig | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2024 | Co-winner | Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom | Ilyon Woo | Simon & Schuster |
| 2024 | Finalist | Larry McMurtry: A Life | Tracy Daugherty | St. Martin's Press |
| 2023 | Winner | G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century | Beverly Gage | Viking |
| 2023 | Finalist | His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice | Robert Samuels, Toluse Olorunnipa | Viking |
| 2023 | Finalist | Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century | Jennifer Homans | Random House Trade Paperbacks |
| 2022 | Winner | Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist's Memoir of the Jim Crow South | Winfred Rembert, Erin I. Kelly | Bloomsbury |
| 2022 | Finalist | Pessoa: A Biography | Richard Zenith | Liveright |
| 2022 | Finalist | The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine | Janice P. Nimura | Unknown |
| 2021 | Winner | The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X | Les Payne, Tamara Payne | Liveright |
| 2021 | Finalist | Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath | Heather Clark | Jonathan Cape |
| 2021 | Finalist | Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World | Amy Stanley | Scribner |
| 2020 | Winner | Sontag: Her Life and Work | Benjamin Moser | Ecco |
| 2020 | Finalist | Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century | George Packer | Knopf |
| 2020 | Finalist | Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me | Deirdre Bair | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |
| 2019 | Winner | The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke | Jeffrey C. Stewart | Oxford University Press |
| 2019 | Finalist | Proust's Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siècle Paris | Caroline Weber | Knopf |
| 2019 | Finalist | The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam | Max Boot | Head of Zeus |
| 2018 | Winner | Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder | Caroline Fraser | Metropolitan Books |
| 2018 | Finalist | Richard Nixon: The Life | John A. Farrell | Doubleday |
| 2018 | Finalist | Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character | Kay Redfield Jamison | Vintage Books |
| 2017 | Winner | The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between | Hisham Matar | Vintage Books |
| 2017 | Finalist | In the Darkroom | Susan Faludi | Metropolitan Books |
| 2017 | Finalist | When Breath Becomes Air | Paul Kalanithi | Random House |
| 2016 | Winner | Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life | William Finnegan | Penguin Press |
| 2016 | Finalist | Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America | T. J. Stiles | Knopf |
| 2016 | Finalist | The Light of the World: A Memoir | Elizabeth Alexander | Unknown |
| 2015 | Winner | The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe | David I. Kertzer | Random House Trade Paperbacks |
| 2015 | Finalist | Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism | Thomas Brothers | W. W. Norton |
| 2015 | Finalist | Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 | Stephen Kotkin | Penguin Press |
| 2014 | Winner | Margaret Fuller: A New American Life | Megan Marshall | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| 2014 | Finalist | Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World | Leo Damrosch | Yale University Press |
| 2014 | Finalist | Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life | Jonathan Sperber | Liveright |
| 2013 | Winner | The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo | Tom Reiss | Crown |
| 2013 | Finalist | Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece | Michael Gorra | W. W. Norton |
| 2013 | Finalist | The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy | David Nasaw | Penguin Press |
| 2012 | Winner | George F. Kennan: An American Life | John Lewis Gaddis | W. W. Norton |
| 2012 | Finalist | Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution | Mary Gabriel | Little, Brown |
| 2012 | Finalist | Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention | Manning Marable | Viking |
| 2011 | Winner | Washington: A Life | Ron Chernow | Penguin Books |
| 2011 | Finalist | Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon | Michael O'Brien | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 2011 | Finalist | The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century | Alan Brinkley | Knopf |
| 2010 | Winner | The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt | T. J. Stiles | Vintage Books |
| 2010 | Finalist | Cheever: A Life | Blake Bailey | Vintage Books |
| 2010 | Finalist | Woodrow Wilson: A Biography | John Milton Cooper, Jr. | Vintage Books |
| 2009 | Winner | American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House | Jon Meacham | Random House |
| 2009 | Finalist | The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century | Steve Coll | Penguin Books |
| 2009 | Finalist | Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt | H.W. Brands | Doubleday |
| 2008 | Winner | Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father | John Matteson | W. W. Norton |
| 2008 | Finalist | The Life of Kingsley Amis | Zachary Leader | Jonathan Cape |
| 2008 | Finalist | The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein | Martin Duberman | Knopf |
| 2007 | Winner | The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher | Debby Applegate | Doubleday |
| 2007 | Finalist | Andrew Carnegie | David Nasaw | Penguin Press |
| 2007 | Finalist | John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty | Arthur H. Cash | Yale University Press |
| 2006 | Winner | American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer | Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin | Knopf |
| 2006 | Finalist | The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism | Megan Marshall | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| 2006 | Finalist | The Year of Magical Thinking | Joan Didion | Random House |
| 2005 | Winner | de Kooning: An American Master | Mark Stevens, Annalyn Swan | Knopf |
| 2005 | Finalist | Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of The Birds of America | William Souder | Unknown |
| 2005 | Finalist | Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare | Stephen Greenblatt | W. W. Norton |
| 2004 | Winner | Khrushchev: The Man and His Era | William Taubman | W. W. Norton |
| 2004 | Finalist | Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work | Hayden Herrera | Bloomsbury |
| 2004 | Finalist | Isaac Newton | James Gleick | HarperCollins |
| 2003 | Winner | Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 3 | Robert A. Caro | Knopf |
| 2003 | Finalist | Beethoven: The Music and the Life | Lewis Lockwood | W. W. Norton |
| 2003 | Finalist | The Fly Swatter: A Portrait of an Exceptional Character | Nicholas Dawidoff | Vintage Books |
| 2002 | Winner | John Adams | David McCullough | Simon & Schuster |
| 2002 | Finalist | An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood | Jimmy Carter | Simon & Schuster |
| 2002 | Finalist | Grant | Jean Edward Smith | Unknown |
| 2001 | Winner | W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963 | David Levering Lewis | Henry Holt and Company |
| 2001 | Finalist | Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician | Christoph Wolff | W. W. Norton |
| 2001 | Finalist | The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin | H.W. Brands | Anchor |
| 2000 | Winner | Vera, Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov | Stacy Schiff | Kuperard Publishers |
| 2000 | Finalist | Clear Springs: A Memoir | Bobbie Ann Mason | Unknown |
| 2000 | Finalist | Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love | Dava Sobel | Fourth Estate |
| 1999 | Winner | Lindbergh | A. Scott Berg | Berkley |
| 1999 | Finalist | A Beautiful Mind | Sylvia Nasar | Simon & Schuster |
| 1999 | Finalist | At Home with the Marquis de Sade: A Life | Francine du Plessix Gray | Unknown |
| 1998 | Winner | Personal History | Katharine Graham | Vintage Books |
| 1998 | Finalist | Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public-Private Life | James H. Jones | W. W. Norton |
| 1998 | Finalist | Whittaker Chambers: A Biography | Sam Tanenhaus | Random House |
| 1997 | Winner | Angela's Ashes: A Memoir | Frank McCourt | Touchstone |
| 1997 | Finalist | Herman Melville: A Biography, Volume 1, 1819–1851 | Hershel Parker | Unknown |
| 1997 | Finalist | In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country | Kim Barnes | Anchor |
| 1996 | Winner | God: A Biography | Jack Miles | Vintage Books |
| 1996 | Finalist | John Sloan: Painter and Rebel | John Loughery | Unknown |
| 1996 | Finalist | Mozart: A Life | Maynard Solomon | Unknown |
| 1995 | Winner | Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life | Joan D. Hedrick | Oxford University Press |
| 1995 | Finalist | Hugo Black: A Biography | Roger K. Newman | Unknown |
| 1995 | Finalist | Saint-Exupery: A Biography | Stacy Schiff | Unknown |
| 1994 | Winner | W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 | David Levering Lewis | Henry Holt |
| 1994 | Finalist | Genet: A Biography | Edmund White | Random House |
| 1994 | Finalist | In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding | Deborah Baker | Unknown |
| 1993 | Winner | Truman | David McCullough | Simon & Schuster |
| 1993 | Finalist | Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman | James Gleick | Little, Brown |
| 1993 | Finalist | Kissinger: A Biography | Walter Isaacson | Simon & Schuster |
| 1992 | Winner | Fortunate Son: The Autobiography of Lewis B. Puller Jr. | Lewis B. Puller | Bantam Books |
| 1992 | Finalist | Frederick Douglass | William S. McFeely | W. W. Norton |
| 1992 | Finalist | Orwell: The Authorized Biography | Michael Shelden | Unknown |
| 1991 | Winner | Jackson Pollock: An American Saga | Steven Naifeh, Gregory White Smith | Woodward/White |
| 1991 | Finalist | Alfred I. Du Pont: The Man and His Family | Joseph Frazier Wall | Unknown |
| 1991 | Finalist | The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends 1880–1918 | Patricia O'Toole | Ballantine Books |
| 1990 | Winner | Machiavelli in Hell | Sebastian de Grazia | Picador |
| 1990 | Finalist | A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt | Geoffrey C. Ward | Harper & Row |
| 1990 | Finalist | Clear Pictures: First Loves, First Guides | Reynolds Price | Ballantine Books |
| 1990 | Finalist | The Road from Coorain | Jill Ker Conway | William Heinemann |
| 1989 | Winner | Oscar Wilde | Richard Ellmann | Unknown |
| 1989 | Finalist | A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam | Neil Sheehan | Random House |
| 1989 | Finalist | Freud: A Life for Our Time | Peter Gay | Unknown |
| 1989 | Finalist | The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume II, 1941–1967: I Dream a World | Arnold Rampersad | Oxford University Press |
| 1988 | Winner | Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe | David Herbert Donald | Bloomsbury |
| 1988 | Finalist | George Santayana: A Biography | John Owen McCormick | Unknown |
| 1988 | Finalist | Hemingway | Kenneth S. Lynn | Abacus |
| 1987 | Winner | Bearing The Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference | David J. Garrow | William Morrow |
| 1987 | Finalist | Dostoevsky: The Stir of Liberation, 1860–1865 | Joseph Frank | Princeton University Press |
| 1987 | Finalist | Murrow: His Life and Times | A.M. Sperber | Freundlich Books |
| 1987 | Finalist | The Life and Times of Congressman John Quincy Adams | Leonard L. Richards | Oxford University Press |
| 1986 | Winner | Louise Bogan: A Portrait | Elizabeth Frank | Columbia University Press |
| 1986 | Finalist | A Hidden Childhood: A Jewish Girl's Sanctuary in a French Convent, 1942–1945 | Frida Scheps Weinstein | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| 1986 | Finalist | George Washington Williams: A Biography | John Hope Franklin | Unknown |
| 1985 | Winner | The Life and Times of Cotton Mather | Kenneth Silverman | Welcome Rain |
| 1985 | Finalist | Becoming William James | Howard M. Feinstein | Cornell University Press |
| 1985 | Finalist | The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton | Michael Mott | Unknown |
| 1984 | Winner | Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915 | Louis R. Harlan | Oxford University Press |
| 1984 | Finalist | Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just | Kenneth R. Manning | Oxford University Press |
| 1984 | Finalist | Thomas Carlyle: A Biography | Fred Kaplan | Cambridge University Press |
| 1983 | Winner | Growing Up | Russell Baker | Signet |
| 1983 | Finalist | Churchill: Young Man in a Hurry, 1874–1915 | Ted Morgan | Jonathan Cape |
| 1983 | Finalist | Thomas E. Dewey and His Times | Richard Norton Smith | Simon & Schuster |
| 1982 | Winner | Grant: A Biography | William S. McFeely | W. W. Norton |
| 1982 | Finalist | Mornings on Horseback | David McCullough | Simon & Schuster |
| 1982 | Finalist | Waldo Emerson: A Biography | Gay Wilson Allen | Penguin Books |
| 1981 | Winner | Peter the Great: His Life and World | Robert K. Massie | Knopf |
| 1981 | Finalist | Walt Whitman: A Life | Justin Kaplan | Simon & Schuster |
| 1981 | Finalist | Walter Lippmann and the American Century | Ronald Steel | Taylor & Francis |
| 1980 | Winner | The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt | Edmund Morris | Modern Library |
| 1980 | Finalist | Being Bernard Berenson | Meryle Secrest | Hodder & Stoughton |
| 1980 | Finalist | Bernard Berenson: The Making of a Connoisseur | Ernest Samuels | Belknap Press |
| 1980 | Finalist | The Duke of Deception | Geoffrey Wolff | Unknown |
| 1979 | Finalist | Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews | Leonard Baker | Oxford University Press |
| 1978 | Finalist | Samuel Johnson | Walter Jackson Bate | Harcourt |
| 1977 | Finalist | A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence | John E. Mack | Little, Brown |
| 1976 | Finalist | Edith Wharton: A Biography | R. W. B. Lewis | Harper |
| 1975 | Finalist | The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York | Robert A. Caro | Random House Canada |
| 1974 | Finalist | O'Neill Volume II: Son and Artist | Louis Sheaffer | Unknown |
| 1973 | Finalist | Luce and His Empire | W. A. Swanberg | Scribner |
| 1972 | Finalist | Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship, Based on Eleanor Roosevelt's Private Papers | Joseph P. Lash | W. W. Norton |
| 1971 | Finalist | Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 1915–1938, | Lawrance Thompson | Unknown |
| 1970 | Finalist | Huey Long | Thomas Harry Williams | Knopf |
| 1969 | Finalist | The Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends | Benjamin Lawrence Reid | Unknown |
| 1968 | Finalist | Memoirs, 1950–1963 | George F. Kennan | Unknown |
| 1967 | Finalist | Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography | Justin Kaplan | Simon & Schuster |
| 1966 | Finalist | A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House | Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. | Houghton Mifflin |
| 1965 | Finalist | Henry Adams, 3 vols. | Ernest Samuels | Unknown |
| 1964 | Finalist | John Keats | Walter Jackson Bate | Harvard University Press |
| 1963 | Finalist | Henry James: The Master, 1901–1916 | Leon Edel | Avon Books |
| 1961 | Finalist | Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War | David Donald | Knopf |
| 1960 | Finalist | John Paul Jones | Samuel Eliot Morison | Unknown |
| 1959 | Finalist | Woodrow Wilson, American Prophet | Arthur Walworth | Unknown |
| 1958 | Finalist | George Washington, vols. I-VII | Douglas Southall Freeman with John Alexander Carroll, Mary Wells Ashworth | Unknown |
| 1957 | Finalist | Profiles in Courage | John F. Kennedy | Hamish Hamilton |
| 1956 | Finalist | Benjamin Henry Latrobe | Talbot Faulkner Hamlin | Unknown |
| 1955 | Finalist | The Taft Story | William S. White | Unknown |
| 1954 | Finalist | The Spirit of St. Louis | Charles A. Lindbergh | Unknown |
| 1953 | Finalist | Edmund Pendleton 1721–1803 | David J. Mays | Unknown |
| 1952 | Finalist | Charles Evans Hughes | Merlo J. Pusey | Macmillan |
| 1951 | Finalist | John C. Calhoun: American Portrait | Margaret Louise Coit | Houghton Mifflin |
| 1950 | Finalist | John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy | Samuel Flagg Bemis | Knopf |
| 1949 | Finalist | Roosevelt and Hopkins | Robert E. Sherwood | Harper & Brothers |
| 1948 | Finalist | Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow | Margaret Clapp | Greenwood Press |
| 1947 | Finalist | The Autobiography of William Allen White | William Allen White | University Press of Kansas |
| 1946 | Finalist | Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir | Linnie Marsh Wolfe | Knopf |
| 1945 | Finalist | George Bancroft: Brahmin Rebel | Russel Blaine Nye | Knopf |
| 1944 | Finalist | The American Leonardo: The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse | Carleton Mabee | Unknown |
| 1943 | Finalist | Admiral of the Ocean Sea | Samuel Eliot Morison | Unknown |
| 1942 | Finalist | Crusader in Crinoline: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe | Forrest Wilson | Unknown |
| 1941 | Finalist | Jonathan Edwards, 1703–1758: a biography | Ola Elizabeth Winslow | Unknown |
| 1940 | Finalist | Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters. Vols. VII and VIII | Ray Stannard Baker | Unknown |
| 1939 | Finalist | Benjamin Franklin | Carl Van Doren | Unknown |
| 1938 | Finalist | Pedlar's Progress: The Life of Bronson Alcott | Odell Shepard | Unknown |
| 1938 | Finalist | The Life of Andrew Jackson, 2 vols. | Marquis James | Unknown |
| 1937 | Finalist | Hamilton Fish | Allan Nevins | Unknown |
| 1936 | Finalist | The Thought and Character of William James | Ralph Barton Perry | Greenwood Press |
| 1935 | Finalist | R. E. Lee | Douglas S. Freeman | Unknown |
| 1934 | Finalist | John Hay | Tyler Dennett | Unknown |
| 1933 | Finalist | Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage | Allan Nevins | Dodd, Mead & Company |
| 1932 | Finalist | Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography | Henry F. Pringle | Unknown |
| 1931 | Finalist | Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard University, 1869–1901 | Henry James | Unknown |
| 1930 | Finalist | The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston | Marquis James | Unknown |
| 1929 | Finalist | The Training of an American: The Earlier Life and Letters of Walter H. Page | Burton J. Hendrick | Unknown |
| 1928 | Finalist | The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas | Charles Edward Russell | Greenwood Press |
| 1927 | Finalist | Whitman | Emory Holloway | Unknown |
| 1926 | Finalist | The Life of Sir William Osler, 2 vols. | Harvey Cushing | Unknown |
| 1925 | Finalist | Barrett Wendell and His Letters | M. A. De Wolfe Howe | Unknown |
| 1924 | Finalist | From Immigrant to Inventor | Michael I. Pupin | Unknown |
| 1923 | Finalist | The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page | Burton J. Hendrick | Unknown |
| 1922 | Finalist | A Daughter of the Middle Border | Hamlin Garland | Unknown |
| 1921 | Finalist | The Americanization of Edward Bok: The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After | Edward Bok | Unknown |
| 1920 | Finalist | The Life of John Marshall, 4 vols. | Albert J. Beveridge | Houghton Mifflin |
| 1919 | Finalist | The Education of Henry Adams | Henry Adams | Unknown |
| 1918 | Finalist | Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed | William Cabell Bruce | Unknown |
| 1917 | Finalist | Julia Ward Howe | Laura E. Richards, Maud Howe Elliott, assisted by Florence Howe Hall | Unknown |