The Pulitzer Prizes were established in 1917 with an endowment from Joseph Pulitzer, an American newspaper publisher, to Columbia University to recognize significant achievements in journalism, letters, drama, and music. Prizes in letters are awarded in the categories of fiction, general nonfiction, history, poetry, and biography/autobiography, and include a $5,000 cash award.
2009 Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
2008 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
2007 The Road by Cormac McCarthy
1997 Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser
1993 A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
Nonfiction
2009 Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon
2008 The Years of Extermination by Saul Friedlander
2007 The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
2006 Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins
2003 A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power
2002 Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution by Diane McWhorter
2001 Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix
2000 Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower
1998 Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
1997 Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris by Richard Kluger
1996 The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts after Communism by Tina Rosenberg
1992 The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power by Daniel Yergin
1990 And Their Children after Them by Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson
1989 A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan
1987 Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land by David K. Shipler
1984 The Social Transformation of American Medicine by Paul Starr
1981 Fin-De-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture by Carl E. Schorske
1980 Godel, Escher, Baeh: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
1973 Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam by Frances Fitzgerald
1972 Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 by Barbara W. Tuchm
1968 Rousseau and Revolution, The Tenth and Concluding Volume of the Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant
1967 The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture by David Brion Davis
1964 Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter
Biography
2009 American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham
2008 Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson
2007 The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher by Debby Applegate
2006 American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
2005 de Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan
2004 Khrushchev: The Man and His Era by William Taubman
2003 Master of the Senate by Robert A. Caro
2002 John Adams by David McCullough
2001 W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963 by David Levering Lewis
2000 Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff
1999 Lindbergh by A. Scott Berg
1998 Personal History by Katharine Graham
1997 Angela's Ashes : A Memoir by Frank McCourt
1996 God: A Biography by Jack Miles
1995 Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life by Joan D. Hedrick
1994 W.E.B. DuBois by David L. Lewis
1993 Truman by David McCullough
1992 Fortunate Son by Lewis B. Puller, Jr.
1991 Jackson Pollock by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith
1990 Machiavelli in Hell by Sebastian de Grazia
1989 Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellmann
1988 Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe by David Herbert Donald
1987 Bearing the Cross by David J. Garrow
1986 Louise Bogan: A Portrait by Elizabeth Frank
1985 The Life and Times of Cotton Mather by Kenneth Silverman
1984 Booker T. Washington by Louis R. Harlan
1983 Growing Up by Russell Baker
1982 Grant: A Biography by William McFeely
1981 Peter the Great: His Life and World by Robert K. Massie
1980 The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
1979 Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews by Leonard Baker
1978 Samuel Johnson by Walter Jackson Bate
1977 A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence by John E. Mack
1976 Edith Wharton: A Biography by R.W.B. Lewis
1975 The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro
1974 O'Neill, Son and Artist by Louis Sheaffer
1973 Luce and His Empire by W.A. Swanberg
1972 Eleanor and Franklin by Joseph P. Lash
1971 Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 1915 -1938 by Lawrence Thompson
1970 Huey Long by T. Harry Williams
1969 The Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends by Benjamin Lawrence Reid1968 Memoirs by George E. Kennan
1967 Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain by Justin Kaplan
1966 A Thousand Days by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
1965 Henry Adams by Ernest Samuels
1964 John Keats by Walter Jackson Bate
1963 Henry James by Leon Edel
1962 No Award
1961 Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War by David Donald
1960 John Paul Jones by Samuel Eliot Morison
1959 Woodrow Wilson, American Prophet by Arthur Walworth
1958 George Washington, Volumes I-VI, by Douglas Southall Freeman, and Volume VII by John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth
1957 Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy
1956 Benjamin Henry Latrobe by Talbot Faulkner Hamlin
1955 The Taft Story by William S. White
1954 The Spirit of St. Louis by Charles A. Lindbergh
1953 Edmund Pendleton 1721-1803 by David J. Mays
1952 Charles Evans Hughes by Merlo J. Pusey
1951 John C. Calhoun: American Portrait by Margaret Louise Coit
1950 John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy by Samuel Flagg Bemis
History
2009 The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed
2008 What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker
2007 The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff
2006 Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky
2003 An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson
2002 The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand
2001 Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis
2000 Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 by David M. Kennedy
1999 Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace
1998 Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion by Edward J. Larson
1997 Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution by Jack N. Rakove
1993 The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood
1992 The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties by Mark E. Neely, Jr.
1990 In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines by Stanley Karnow
1989 Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson
1988 The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846-1976 by Robert Bruce
1983 The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 by Rhys L. Isaac
1981 American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876 by Lawrence A. Cremin
1978 The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.
1977 The Impending Crisis, 1841-1867 by David M. Potter (finished by Don E. Fehrenbacher)
1974 The Americans: The Democratic Experience by Daniel J. Boorstin
1973 People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization by Michael Kammen
1971 Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom by James MacGregor Burns
1970 Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department by Dean Acheson
1968 The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn
1967 Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West by William H. Goetzmann
1964 Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town by Sumner Chilton Powell
1963 Washington, Village and Capital, 1800-1878 by Constance McLaughlin Green
1962 The Triumphant Empire: Thunderclouds Gather in the West, 1763-1766 by Lawrence H. Gipson
1961 Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference by Herbert Feis
1959 The Republican Era: l869-1901 by Leonard D. White, with Jean Schneider
1955 Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History by Paul Horgan
1951 The Old Northwest, Pioneer Period 1815-1840 by R. Carlyle Buley
Poetry
2008 Time and Materials by Robert Hass
2007 Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey
2006 Late Wife by Claudia Emerson
1961 Times Three: Selected Verse from Three Decades by Phyllis McGinley