LibGuides: Check Out a Champion: Pulitzer Prize Winners in Literature: Biography

SSPL Holdings (2012 - present)

2025 Winner:
Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life
by Jason Roberts
Call Number: 578.012 Rob
*shelved in New / Popular*

ISBN: 9781984855206

Publication Date: 2024-04-09
2024 Winner:
King: A Life
by Jonathan Eig
Call Number: B King

ISBN: 9780374279295

Publication Date: 2023-05-16
2024 Winner:
Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
by Ilyon Woo
Call Number: 306.362 Woo

ISBN: 9781501191053

Publication Date: 2023-01-17
2023 Winner:
G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century
by Beverly Gage
Call Number: B Hoover

ISBN: 9780670025374

Publication Date: 2022-11-22
2022 Winner:
Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist's Memoir of the Jim Crow South
by Winfred Rembert, as told to Erin I. Kelly
Call Number: B Rembert

ISBN: 9781635576597

Publication Date: 2021-09-07
2021 Winner:
The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X
by Les Payne and Tamara Payne
Call Number: B X

ISBN: 9781631491665

Publication Date: 2020-10-20
2020 Winner:
Sontag: Her Life and Work
by Benjamin Moser
Call Number: B Sontag

ISBN: 9780062896391

Publication Date: 2019-09-17
2018 Winner:
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
by Caroline Fraser
Call Number: B Wilder

ISBN: 9781627792769

Publication Date: 2017-11-21
2017 Winner:
The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
by Hisham Matar
Call Number: 823.92 Mat

ISBN: 9780812994827

Publication Date: 2016-07-05
2016 Winner:
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
by William Finnegan
Call Number: B Finnegan

ISBN: 9781594203473

Publication Date: 2015-07-21
2015 Winner:
The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe
by David I. Kertzer
Call Number: 322.1094 Ker

ISBN: 9780812993462

Publication Date: 2014-01-28
2014 Winner:
Margaret Fuller: A New American Life
by Megan Marshall
Call Number: B Fuller

ISBN: 9780544245617

Publication Date: 2014-03-04
2013 Winner:
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo
by Tom Reiss
Call Number: [may be available as a print book through Interlibrary Loan]
Available as an eBook from SSPL

ISBN: 9780307382467

Publication Date: 2012-09-18

SSPL Holdings (1917 - 2011)

2011 Winner:
Washington: A Life
by Ron Chernow
Call Number: B Washington

ISBN: 9781594202667

Publication Date: 2010-10-05
2009 Winner:
American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House
by Jon Meacham
Call Number: [may be available as a print book through Interlibrary Loan]
Available as an eAudiobook from SSPL

ISBN: 9781400063253

Publication Date: 2008-11-11
2008 Winner:
Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father
by John Matteson
Call Number: 818.4 Mat

ISBN: 9780393059649

Publication Date: 2007-08-17
2006 Winner:
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
Call Number: B Oppenheimer

ISBN: 9780375726262

Publication Date: 2006-04-11
2004 Winner:
Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
by William Taubman
Call Number: B Khrushchev

ISBN: 0393051447

Publication Date: 2003-03-17
1999 Winner:
Lindbergh
by A. Scott Berg
Call Number: B Lindbergh

ISBN: 0399144498

Publication Date: 1998-09-21
1998 Winner:
Personal History
by Katharine Graham
Call Number: B Graham

ISBN: 0375701044

Publication Date: 1998-02-24
1997 Winner:
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir
by Frank McCourt
Call Number: 929.2 McC

ISBN: 0684874350

Publication Date: 1996-09-05
1996 Winner:
God: A Biography
by Jack Miles
Call Number: 231 Mil

ISBN: 0679418334

Publication Date: 1995-03-21
1993 Winner:
Truman
by David McCullough
Call Number: B Truman

ISBN: 9780671456542

Publication Date: 1992-06-15
1992 Winner:
Fortunate Son: The Healing of a Vietnam Vet
by Lewis B. Puller
Call Number: 959.704 P

ISBN: 0802112188

Publication Date: 1991-06-01
1983 Winner:
Growing Up
by Russell Baker
Call Number: B Baker

ISBN: 9780451168382

Publication Date: 1992-06-02
1957 Winner:
Profiles in Courage
by John F. Kennedy
Call Number: 920 Ken

ISBN: 0060854936

Publication Date: 2006-04-11
1954 Winner:
The Spirit of St. Louis
by Charles A. Lindbergh
Call Number: B Lindbergh

ISBN: 0684852772

Publication Date: 1998-08-28

Winners from Other Years (1960 - present)

Ask at the Reference Desk (ext. 304)
to see if a copy can be located
through Interlibrary Loan!

The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke
by Jeffrey C. Stewart
Year Won: 2019
George F. Kennan: An American Life
by John Lewis Gaddis
Year Won: 2012
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
by T.J. Stiles
Year Won: 2010
The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher
by Debby Applegate
Year Won: 2007
De Kooning: An American Master
by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan
Year Won: 2005
Master of the Senate
by Robert A. Caro
Year Won: 2003
John Adams
by David McCullough
Year Won: 2002
W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963
by David Levering Lewis
Year Won: 2001
Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)
by Stacy Schiff
Year Won: 2000
Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life
by Joan D. Hedrick
Year Won: 1995
W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race 1868-1919
by David Levering Lewis
Year Won: 1994
Jackson Pollock
by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith
Year Won: 1991
Machiavelli in Hell
by Sebastian de Grazia
Year Won: 1990
Oscar Wilde
by Richard Ellmann
Year Won: 1989
Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe
by David Herbert Donald
Year Won: 1988
Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
by David J. Garrow
Year Won: 1987
Louise Bogan: A Portrait
by Elizabeth Frank
Year Won: 1986
The Life and Times of Cotton Mather
by Kenneth Silverman
Year Won: 1985
Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915
by Louis R. Harlan
Year Won: 1984
Grant: A Biography
by William McFeely
Year Won: 1982
Peter the Great: His Life and World
by Robert K. Massie
Year Won: 1981
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
by Edmund Morris
Year Won: 1980
Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews
by Leonard Baker
Year Won: 1979
Samuel Johnson
by Walter Jackson Bate
Year Won: 1978
A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence
by John E. Mack
Year Won: 1977
Edith Wharton: A Biography
by R. W. B. Lewis
Year Won: 1977
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
by Robert A. Caro
Year Won: 1975
O'Neill, Son and Artist
by Louis Sheaffer
Year Won: 1974
Luce and His Empire
by W. A. Swanberg
Year Won: 1973
Eleanor and Franklin
by Joseph P. Lash
Year Won: 1972
Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 1915 -1938
by Lawrance Thompson
Year Won: 1971
Huey Long
by T. Harry Williams
Year Won: 1970
The Man From New York: John Quinn and His Friends
by Benjamin Lawrence Reid
Year Won: 1969
Memoirs
by George F. Kennan
Year Won: 1968
Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain
by Justin Kaplan
Year Won: 1967
A Thousand Days
by Arthur M. Schlesinger
Year Won: 1966
Henry Adams
by Ernest Samuels
Year Won: 1965
John Keats
by Walter Jackson Bate
Year Won: 1964
Henry James
by Leon Edel
Year Won: 1963
Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War
by David Donald
Year Won: 1961
John Paul Jones
by Samuel Eliot Morison
Year Won: 1960

Winners from Other Years (1917 - 1959)

Woodrow Wilson
by Arthur Walworth
Year Won: 1959
George Washington
by Douglas Southall Freeman
Year Won: 1958
Benjamin Henry Latrobe
by Talbot Faulkner Hamlin
Year Won: 1956
The Taft Story
by William S. White
Year Won: 1955
Edmund Pendleton 1721-1803
by David J. Mays
Year Won: 1953
Charles Evans Hughes
by Merlo J. Pusey
Year Won: 1952
John C. Calhoun: American Portrait
by Margaret Louise Coit
Year Won: 1951
John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy
by Samuel Flagg Bemis
Year Won: 1950
Roosevelt and Hopkins
by Robert E. Sherwood
Year Won: 1949
Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow
by Margaret Clapp
Year Won: 1948
The Autobiography of William Allen White
by William Allen White
Year Won: 1947
Son of the Wilderness
by Linnie Marsh Wolfe
Year Won: 1946
George Bancroft: Brahmin Rebel
by Russell Blaine Nye
Year Won: 1945
The American Leonardo: The Life of Samuel F B. Morse
by Carleton Mabee
Year Won: 1944
Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus
by Samuel Eliot Morison
Year Won: 1943
Crusader in Crinoline
by Forrest Wilson
Year Won: 1942
Jonathan Edwards, 1703–1758: A Biography
by Ola Elizabeth Winslow
Year Won: 1941
Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters
by Ray Stannard Baker
Year Won: 1940
Benjamin Franklin
by Carl Van Doren
Year Won: 1939
Pedlar's Progress
by Odell Shepard
Year Won: 1938
The Life of Andrew Jackson
by Marquis James
Year Won: 1938
Hamilton Fish: The Inner History of the Grant Administration
by Allan Nevins
Year Won: 1937
The Thought and Character of William James: As Revealed in Unpublished Correspondence and Notes, Together with His Published Writings
by Ralph Barton Perry
Year Won: 1936
R. E. Lee
by Douglas S. Freeman
Year Won: 1935
John Hay
by Tyler Dennett
Year Won: 1934
Grover Cleveland
by Allan Nevins
Year Won: 1933
Theodore Roosevelt
by Henry F. Pringle
Year Won: 1932
Charles W. Eliot
by Henry James
Year Won: 1931
The Raven
by Marquis James
Year Won: 1930
The Training of an American: The Earlier Life and Letters of Walter H. Page
by Burton J. Hendrick
Year Won: 1929
The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas
by Charles Edward Russell
Year Won: 1928
Whitman: An Interpretation in Narrative
by Emory Holloway
Year Won: 1927
The Life of Sir William Osler
by Harvey Cushing
Year Won: 1926
Barrett Wendell and His Letters
by M. A. Dewolfe
Year Won: 1925
From Immigrant to Inventor
by Michael Idvorsky Pupin
Year Won: 1924
The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page
by Burton J. Hendrick
Year Won: 1923
A Daughter of the Middle Border
by Hamlin Garland
Year Won: 1922
The Americanization of Edward Bok
by Edward Bok
Year Won: 1921
The Life of John Marshall
by Albert J. Beveridge
Year Won: 1920
The Education of Henry Adams
by Henry Adams
Year Won: 1919
Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed
by William Cabell Bruce
Year Won: 1918
Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910
by Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliott
Year Won: 1917

Check Out a Champion: Pulitzer Prize Winners in Literature: Biography

The Award

The Pulitzer Prize in the Biography category was first awarded in 1917. It is awarded for “a distinguished and appropriately documented
biography by an American author.” See also: winners in the Memoir/Autobiography, History, and General Nonfiction categories.

“Biography.” The Pulitzer Prizes. Columbia University, 2024. Web. www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/222.

SSPL Holdings (2012 - present)

SSPL Holdings (1917 - 2011)

Winners from Other Years (1960 - present)

Ask at the Reference Desk (ext. 304)
to see if a copy can be located
through Interlibrary Loan!

Winners from Other Years (1917 - 1959)

Check Out a Champion: Pulitzer Prize Winners in Literature: Biography

The Award

The Pulitzer Prize in the Biography category was first awarded in 1917. It is awarded for “a distinguished and appropriately documented biography by an American author.” See also: winners in the Memoir/Autobiography, History, and General Nonfiction categories.

“Biography.” The Pulitzer Prizes. Columbia University, 2024. Web. www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/222.

SSPL Holdings (2012 - present)

SSPL Holdings (1917 - 2011)

Winners from Other Years (1960 - present)

Ask at the Reference Desk (ext. 304) to see if a copy can be located through Interlibrary Loan!

Winners from Other Years (1917 - 1959)

The Pulitzer Prize in the Biography category was first awarded in 1917. It is awarded for “a distinguished and appropriately documented
biography by an American author.” See also: winners in the Memoir/Autobiography, History, and General Nonfiction categories.

Ask at the Reference Desk (ext. 304)
to see if a copy can be located
through Interlibrary Loan!