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One of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded. It has been presented since 1917 for a distinguished biography or autobiography by an American author or co-authors, published during the preceding calendar year.
Prize Winners By Year
(2018)
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Caroline Fraser
(2017)
The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
Hisham Matar
(2016)
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
William Finnegan
(2015)
The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe
David I. Kertzer
(2014)
Margaret Fuller: A New American Life
Megan Marshall
Massachusetts Book Award (2014), PEN Literary Award (2014), Pulitzer Prize (2014)
(2013)
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo
Tom Reiss
Cundill Prize (2013), Literary Award (2013), National Book Critics Circle Award (2012), PEN Literary Award (2013), Pulitzer Prize (2013)
(2012)
George F. Kennan: An American Life
John Lewis Gaddis
(2011)
Washington: A Life
Ron Chernow
ALA Notable Books (2011), Christopher Awards (2011), L.A. Times Book Prize (2010), Pulitzer Prize (2011)
(2010)
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
T.J. Stiles
National Book Awards (2009), Pulitzer Prize (2010)
(2009)
American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House
Jon Meacham
L.A. Times Book Prize (2008), Pulitzer Prize (2009)
(2008)
Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father
John Matteson
Massachusetts Book Award (MassBook) (2008), Pulitzer Prize (2008)
(2007)
The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher
DebApplegate
Ambassador Book Awards (2007), Connecticut Book Awards (2007), L.A. Times Book Prize (2006), National Book Critics Circle Award (2006)
(2006)
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
Ambassador Book Awards (2006), Lukas Prize Project (2006), National Book Critics Circle Award (2005)
(2005)
de Kooning: An American Master
Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan
Ambassador Book Awards (2005), L.A. Times Book Prize (2004), National Book Critics Circle Award (2004), Pulitzer Prize (2005)
(2004)
Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
William Taubman
(2003)
Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Robert Caro
ALA Notable Books (2003), L.A. Times Book Prize (2002), National Book Awards (2002), National Book Critics Circle Award (2002), Pulitzer Prize (2003)
(2002)
John Adams
David McCullough
ALA Notable Books (2002), Ambassador Book Awards (2002), Christopher Awards (2002), L.A. Times Book Prize (2001), Pulitzer Prize (2002)
(2001)
W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963
David Levering Lewis
Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary_award (2001), National Book Awards (2000)
(2000)
Vera, Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov
Stacy Schiff
(1999)
Lindbergh
A. Scott Berg
(1998)
Personal History
Katharine Graham
(1997)
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir
Frank McCourt
(1996)
God: A Biography
Jack Miles
(1995)
Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life
Joan D. Hedrick
(1994)
W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919
David Levering Lewis
(1993)
Truman
David McCullough
(1992)
Fortunate Son: The Autobiography of Lewis B. Puller Jr.
Lewis B. Puller
(1991)
Jackson Pollock: An American Saga
Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith
(1990)
Machiavelli in Hell
Sebastian de Grazia
(1989)
Oscar Wilde
Richard Ellmann
(1988)
Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe
David Herbert Donald
(1987)
Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
David J. Garrow
(1986)
Louise Bogan: A Portrait
Elizabeth Frank
(1985)
The Life and Times of Cotton Mather
Kenneth Silverman
(1984)
Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915
Louis R. Harlan
(1983)
Growing Up
Russell Baker
(1982)
Grant: A Biography
William S. McFeely
(1981)
Peter the Great: His Life and World
Robert K. Massie
(1980)
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
Edmund Morris
(1979)
Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews
Leonard Baker
(1978)
Samuel Johnson
Walter Jackson Bate
(1977)
A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence
John E. Mack
(1976)
Edith Wharton: A Biography
R. W. B. Lewis
(1975)
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
Robert Caro
(1974)
O'Neill, Son and Artist
Louis Sheaffer
(1973)
Luce and His Empire
W. A. Swanberg
(1972)
Eleanor and Franklin
Joseph P. Lash
(1971)
Robert Frost : The Years of Triumph, 1915–1938,
Lawrence Thompson
(1970)
Huey Long
Thomas Harry Williams
(1969)
The Man From New York: John Quinn and His Friends
Benjamin Lawrence Reid
(1968)
Memoirs
George F. Kennan
(1967)
Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain
Justin Kaplan
(1966)
A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
(1965)
Henry Adams, 3 vols.,
Ernest Samuels
(1964)
John Keats
Walter Jackson Bate
(1963)
Henry James
Leon Edel
( no award given)
#VALUE!
#VALUE!
(1961)
Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War
David Donald
(1960)
John Paul Jones
Samuel Eliot Morison
(1959)
Woodrow Wilson, American Prophet
Arthur Walworth
(1958)
George Washington, Volumes I-VII
Douglas Southall Freeman with John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth
(1957)
Profiles in Courage
John F. Kennedy
(1956)
Benjamin Henry Latrobe
Talbot Faulkner Hamlin
(1955)
The Taft Story
William S. White
(1954)
The Spirit of St. Louis
Charles A. Lindbergh
(1953)
Edmund Pendleton 1721–1803
David J. Mays
(1952)
Charles Evans Hughes
Merlo J. Pusey
(1951)
John C. Calhoun: American Portrait
Margaret Louise Coit
(1950)
John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy
Samuel Flagg Bemis
(1949)
Roosevelt and Hopkins
Robert E. Sherwood
(1948)
Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow
Margaret Clapp
(1947)
The Autobiography of William Allen White
William Allen White
(1946)
Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir
Linnie Marsh Wolfe
(1945)
George Bancroft: Brahmin Rebel
Russel Blaine Nye
(1944)
The American Leonardo: The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse
Carleton Mabee
(1943)
Admiral of the Ocean Sea
Samuel Eliot Morison
(1942)
Crusader in Crinoline: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe
Forrest Wilson
(1941)
Jonathan Edwards, 1703–1758: a biography
Ola Elizabeth Winslow
(1940)
Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters. Vols. VII and VIII
Ray Stannard Baker
(1939)
Benjamin Franklin
Carl Van Doren
(1938)
Pedlar's Progress: The Life of Bronson Alcott
Odell Shepard
(1938)
Andrew Jackson, 2 vols.
Marquis James
(1937)
Hamilton Fish
Allan Nevins
(1936)
The Thought and Character of William James
Ralph Barton Perry
(1935)
R. E. Lee
Douglas S. Freeman
(1934)
John Hay
Tyler Dennett
(1933)
Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage
Allan Nevins
(1932)
Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography
Henry F. Pringle
(1931)
Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard University, 1869–1901
Henry James
(1930)
The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston
Marquis James
(1929)
The Training of an American: The Earlier Life and Letters of Walter H. Page
Burton J. Hendrick
(1928)
The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas
Charles Edward Russell
(1927)
Whitman
Emory Holloway
(1926)
The Life of Sir William Osler, 2 vols.
Harvey Cushing
(1925)
Barrett Wendell and His Letters
M. A. Dewolfe Howe
(1924)
From Immigrant to Inventor
Michael I. Pupin
(1923)
The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page
Burton J. Hendrick
(1922)
A Daughter of the Middle Border
Hamlin Garland
(1921)
The Americanization of Edward Bok
Edward Bok
(1920)
The Life of John Marshall, 4 vols.
Albert J. Beveridge
(1919)
The Education of Henry Adams
Henry Adams
(1918)
Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed
William Cabell Bruce
(1917)
Julia Ward Howe
Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliott, assisted Florence Howe Hall
Nominees By Year (1980 — Present)
- 2017. When Breath Becomes AirPaul Kalanithi | 4.32 avg rating — 180,613 ratings
- 2017. In the DarkroomSusan Faludi | 3.93 avg rating — 1,868 ratings
- 2016. The Light of the WorldElizabeth Alexander | 4.03 avg rating — 5,792 ratings
- 2015. Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928Stephen Kotkin | 4.24 avg rating — 608 ratings
- 2015. Louis Armstrong, Master of ModernismThomas Brothers | 3.79 avg rating — 52 ratings
- 2014. Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century LifeJonathan Sperber | 3.93 avg rating — 429 ratings
- 2014. Jonathan Swift: His Life and His WorldLeo Damrosch | 4.08 avg rating — 132 ratings
- 2013. Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American MasterpieceMichael Gorra | 4.26 avg rating — 254 ratings
- 2013. The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. KennedyDavid Nasaw | 4.04 avg rating — 2,908 ratings
- 2009. The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American CenturySteve Coll | 3.94 avg rating — 1,299 ratings
- 2009. Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano RooseveltH.W. Brands | 4.03 avg rating — 5,341 ratings
- 1999. A Beautiful MindSylvia Nasar | 4.12 avg rating — 103,161 ratings
- 1998. Whittaker Chambers: A BiographySam Tanenhaus | 4.19 avg rating — 358 ratings
- 1998. Alfred C. Kinsey: A LifeJames Howard Jones | 3.78 avg rating — 92 ratings
- 1997. Herman Melville: A Biography (Volume 1, 1819–1851)Hershel Parker | 4.24 avg rating — 33 ratings
- 1997. In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown CountryKim Barnes | 3.84 avg rating — 439 ratings
- 1996. MozartMaynard Solomon | 4.08 avg rating — 776 ratings
- 1996. John Sloan: Painter and RebelJohn Loughery | 4.00 avg rating — 8 ratings
- 1995. Saint-ExupéryStacy Schiff | 4.00 avg rating — 236 ratings
- 1995. Hugo Black: A BiographyRoger K. Newman | 3.93 avg rating — 44 ratings
- 1994. GenetEdmund White | 4.12 avg rating — 544 ratings
- 1994. In Extremis: The Life of Laura RidingDeborah Baker | 3.50 avg rating — 10 ratings
- 1993. KissingerWalter Isaacson | 3.93 avg rating — 1,928 ratings
- 1993. Genius: The Life and Science of Richard FeynmanJames Gleick | 4.16 avg rating — 15,771 ratings
- 1991. Alfred I. Du Pont: The Man and His FamilyJoseph Frazier Wall | 3.83 avg rating — 12 ratings
- 1991. The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends, 1880–1918Patricia O’Toole | 4.17 avg rating — 88 ratings
- 1990. A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin RooseveltGeoffrey C. Ward | 4.60 avg rating — 75 ratings
- 1990. Clear Pictures: First Loves, First GuidesReynolds Price | 3.82 avg rating — 67 ratings
- 1990. The Road from Coorain: A Woman’s Exquisitely Clear-Sighted Memoir of Growing Up AustralianJill Ker Conway | 4.04 avg rating — 9,449 ratings
- 1989. Freud: A Life for Our TimePeter Gay | 4.11 avg rating — 991 ratings
- 1988. George Santayana: A BiographyJohn McCormick | 3.67 avg rating — 6 ratings
- 1988. HemingwayKenneth S. Lynn | 3.93 avg rating — 285 ratings
- 1987. Murrow: His Life and TimesAnn M. Sperber | 4.07 avg rating — 99 ratings
- 1987. The Life and Times of Congressman John Quincy AdamsLeonard L. Richards | 4.00 avg rating — 16 ratings
- 1987. Dostoevsky: The Stir of Liberation, 1860–1865Joseph Frank | 4.50 avg rating — 107 ratings
- 1986. A Hidden Childhood: A Jewish Girl’s Sanctuary in a French Convent, 1942–1945Frida Scheps Weinstein | 3.22 avg rating — 9 ratings
- 1986. George Washington Williams: A BiographyJohn Hope Franklin | 4.00 avg rating — 10 ratings
- 1985. The Seven Mountains of Thomas MertonMichael Mott | 4.28 avg rating — 551 ratings
- 1985. Becoming William JamesHoward M. Feinstein | 3.56 avg rating — 9 ratings
- 1984. Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett JustKenneth R. Manning | 3.76 avg rating — 33 ratings
- 1984. Thomas Carlyle: A BiographyFred Kaplan | 3.60 avg rating — 5 ratings
- 1982. Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore RooseveltDavid McCullough | 4.10 avg rating — 19,377 ratings
- 1982. Waldo EmersonGay Wilson Allen | 3.83 avg rating — 12 ratings
- 1981. Walter Lippmann and the American CenturyRonald Steel | 4.14 avg rating — 70 ratings
- 1981. Walt Whitman: A LifeJustin Kaplan | 3.96 avg rating — 196 ratings
- 1980. Bernard Berenson: The Making of a ConnoisseurErnest Samuels | 3.50 avg rating — 8 ratingsv