National Book Award Winners and Finalists

This is a comprehensive list of all National Book Award winners and finalists in all categories, subdivided into years. Where available, a list of judges are also included. A page with just the winners listed by year will also be available.

Winner
Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography by Justin Kaplan

Finalists
Daumier by Oliver Larkin

James Boswell: The Earlier Years by Frederick A. Pottle

In My Father's Court by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag

Robert Frost: The Early Years by Lawrence Thompson

Winner
The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren

Winner
The Collected Stories of William Faulkner by William Faulkner

Winner
From Here to Eternity by James Jones

Finalists
The Morning Watch by James Agee

The Grass Harp by Truman Capote

Requieum for a Nun by William Faulkner

The Strange Children by Caroline Gordon

The Holy Sinner by Thomas Mann

Melville Goodwin USA by John P. Marquand

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Lie Down in Darkness by William Styron

The Witch Diggers by Jessamyn West

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

Winner
The Fixer by Bernard Malamud

Finalists
The Embezzler by Louis Auchincloss

All in the Family by Edwin O'Connor

The Last Gentleman by Walker Percy

A Dream of Kings by Harry Petrakis

Office Politics by Wilfird Sheed

Winner
Charming Billy by Alice McDermott

Finalists
Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman

The Healing by Gayl Jones

Damascus Gate by Robert Stone

A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe

Winner
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (Random House)

Finalists
American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell (Wayne State University Press)

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin (W.W. Norton & Co.)

Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips (Alfred A. Knopf)

Far North by Marcel Theroux (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Judges
Alan Cheuse, Junot Díaz, Jennifer Egan, Charles Johnson, Lydia Millet

Winner
Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon (McPherson & Co.)

Finalists
Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey (Alfred A. Knopf)

Great House by Nicole Krauss (W.W. Norton & Co.)

So Much for That by Lionel Shriver (Harper)

I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita (Coffee House Press)

Judges
Andrei Codrescu, Samuel R. Delany, Sabina Murray, Joanna Scott, Carolyn See

Winner
Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph L. Rusk

Finalists
The Universe and Dr. Einstein by Lincoln Barnett

The Mature Mind by H.A. Overstreet

This I Remember by Eleanor Roosevelt

Killers of the Dream by Lillian Smith

Lincoln Finds a General by Kenneth P. Williams

Winner
Slaves in the Family by Edward Ball

Finalists
Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom

There Once Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok by Yaffa Eliach

A Slant of Sun: One Child's Courage by Beth Kephart

All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery by Henry Mayer

Winner
Just Kids by Patti Smith (Ecco)

Finalists
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (Spiegel & Grau)

Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq by John W. Dower (W.W. Norton & Co./The New Press)

Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward by Justin Spring (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War by Megan K. Stack (Doubleday)

Judges
Blake Bailey, Marjorie Garber, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Seth Lerer, Sallie Tisdale

Winner
Paterson: Book III and Selected Poems by William Carlos Williams

Winner
Nights and Days by James Merrill

Finalists
Rivers and Mountains by John Ashbery

Looking Up at Leaves by Barbara Howes

Tell Me, Tell Me by Marianne Moore

Necessities of Life by Adrenne Rich

The Tin Can and Other Poems by William Jay Smith

Winner
This Time: New and Selected Poems by Gerald Stern

Finalists
The Art of the Lathe by B.H. Fairchild

The Little Space: Poems Selected and New, 1968-1998 by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998 by Linda Pastan

From the Devotions by Carl Phillips

Winner
Lighthead by Terrance Hayes (Penguin Books)

Finalists
The Eternal City by Kathleen Graber (Princeton University Press)

By the Numbers by James Richardson (Copper Canyon Press)

One with Others by C.D. Wright (Copper Canyon Press)

Ignatz by Monica Youn (Four Way Books)

Judges
Rae Armantrout, Cornelius Eady, Linda Gregerson, Jeffrey McDaniel, Brenda Shaughnessy

Winner
Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine (Philomel Books)

Finalists
Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown & Co.)

Dark Water by Laura McNeal (Alfred A. Knopf)

Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers (Amistad)

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia (Amistad)

Judges
Laban Carrick Hill, Kelly Link, Tor Seidler, Hope Anita Smith, Sara Zarr

2010
Joan Ganz Cooney

2010
Tom Wolfe

Winner
Holes by Louis Sachar

Finalists
The Secret Life of Amanda K. Woods by Ann Cameron

Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key by Jack Gantos

No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War by Anita Lobel

A Long Way from Chicago: A Novel in Stories by Richard Peck