LibGuides: Pulitzer Prize: Biography (1917- )

The Pulitzer Prize in Biography
1917-present

2020s

Winner

Sontag : Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser

Sontag : her life and work by Benjamin Moser
Call Number: BIO SONTA SUS M (Adult Biography)
ISBN: 9780062896391
Publication Date: 2019-09-17
SUBJECTS:
Sontag, Susan, 1933-2004.
Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography.
Women authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography.

Finalists

Our Man : Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century by George Packer
Parisian Lives : Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me by Dierdre Blair

Our Man : Richard Holbrooke and the end of the American century by George Packer
Call Number: BIO HOLBR RIC P (Adult Biography)
ISBN: 9780307958020
Publication Date: 2019-05-07
Richard Holbrooke was brilliant, wholly self-absorbed, and possessed of almost inhuman energy and appetites. Admired and detested, he was the force behind the Dayton Accords that ended the Balkan wars, America's greatest diplomatic achievement in the post-Cold War era. His power lay in an utter belief in himself and his idea of a muscular, generous foreign policy. From his days as a young adviser in Vietnam to his last efforts to end the war in Afghanistan, Holbrooke embodied the postwar American impulse to take the lead on the global stage. But his sharp elbows and tireless self-promotion ensured that he never rose to the highest levels in government that he so desperately coveted. His story is thus the story of America during its era of supremacy: its strength, drive, and sense of possibility, as well as its penchant for overreach and heedless self-confidence.
Parisian Lives : Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and me : a memoir by Deirdre Bair
Call Number: BIO BAIR DEI P (Adult Biography)
ISBN: 9780385542456
Publication Date: 2019-11-12
SUBJECTS:
Bair, Deirdre.
Beckett, Samuel, 1906-1989 -- Psychology.
Beauvoir, Simone de, 1908-1986 -- Psychology.
Biographers -- United States -- Biography.

Winner

The Dead Are Arising : the Life of Malcolm X by Les Payne and Tamara Payne

The Dead Are Arising : the life of Malcolm X by Les Payne; Tamara Payne
Call Number: BIO X MAL P (Adult Biography)
ISBN: 9781631491665
Publication Date: 2020-10-20
Setting Malcolm's life not only within the Nation of Islam but against the larger backdrop of American history, the book traces the life of one of the twentieth century's most politically relevant figures "from street criminal to devoted moralist and revolutionary." In tracing Malcolm X's life from his Nebraska birth in 1925 to his Harlem assassination in 1965, Payne provides searing vignettes culled from Malcolm's Depression-era youth, describing the influence of his Garveyite parents: his father, Earl, a circuit-riding preacher who was run over by a street car in Lansing, Michigan, in 1929, and his mother, Louise, who continued to instill black pride in her children after Earl's death. Filling each chapter with resonant drama, Payne follows Malcolm's exploits as a petty criminal in Boston and Harlem in the 1930s and early 1940s to his religious awakening and conversion to the Nation of Islam in a Massachusetts penitentiary. With a biographer's unwavering determination, Payne corrects the historical record and delivers extraordinary revelations-from the unmasking of the mysterious NOI founder "Fard Muhammad," who preceded Elijah Muhammad; to a hair-rising scene, conveyed in cinematic detail, of Malcolm and Minister Jeremiah X Shabazz's 1961 clandestine meeting with the KKK; to a minute-by-minute account of Malcolm X's murder at the Audubon Ballroom.

Finalists

Red Comet : the Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark
Stranger in the Shogun's City : a Japanese Woman and Her World by Amy Stanley

Red Comet : the short life and blazing art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark
Call Number: BIO PLATH SYL C (Adult Biography)
ISBN: 9780307961167
Publication Date: 2020-10-27
Heather Clark here brings to life the brilliant daughter of Wellesley, MA who had poetic ambition from a very young age, and was an accomplished, published writer of poems and stories before she became the star English student at Smith College. Determined not to read Plath's work as if her every act, from childhood on, was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark presents new materials about Plath's scientist father, her juvenile writings, and her psychiatric treatment, and evokes a culture in transition in the mid-twentieth century, in the shadow of the atom bomb and the Holocaust, as she explores Sylvia's world: her early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife; her conflicted ties to her well-meaning, widowed mother; her troubles at the hands of an unenlightened mental health industry; her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes, a marriage of true minds that would change the course of poetry in English; and much more. Clark's clear-eyed sympathy for Hughes, his lover Assia Wevill, and other demonized players in the arena of Plath's suicide promotes a deeper understanding of her final days, with their outpouring of first-rate poems. Along with illuminating readings of the poems themselves, Clark's meticulous, compassionate research brings us closer than ever to the spirited woman and visionary artist who blazed a trail that still lights the way for women poets the world over.

Winner

Chasing Me to My Grave: an artist's memoir of the Jim Crow South by the late Winfred Rembert as told to Erin I. Kelly

Finalists

Pessoa: a biography by Richard Zenith
The Doctors Blackwell: how two pioneering sisters brought medicine to women and women to medicine by Janice P. Nimura

The Doctors Blackwell [E-Book] : how two pioneering sisters brought medicine to women and women to medicine by Janice P. Nimura
Call Number: BIO BLACK SIS N Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780393635553
Publication Date: 2021-01-19
Elizabeth Blackwell believed from an early age that she was destined for a mission beyond the scope of "ordinary" womanhood. Though the world at first recoiled at the notion of a woman studying medicine, her intelligence and intensity ultimately won her the acceptance of the male medical establishment. In 1849, she became the first woman in America to receive an M.D. She was soon joined in her iconic achievement by her younger sister, Emily, who was actually the more brilliant physician. Exploring the sisters’ allies, enemies, and enduring partnership, Janice P. Nimura presents a story of trial and triumph. Together, the Blackwells founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, the first hospital staffed entirely by women. Both sisters were tenacious and visionary, but their convictions did not always align with the emergence of women’s rights―or with each other. From Bristol, Paris, and Edinburgh to the rising cities of antebellum America, this richly researched new biography celebrates two complicated pioneers who exploded the limits of possibility for women in medicine. As Elizabeth herself predicted, "a hundred years hence, women will not be what they are now.

WINNER

G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage

G-Man : J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage
Call Number: BIO HOOVE JEDG G (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780670025374
Publication Date: 2022-11-22
A major new biography of J Edgar Hoover that draws from never-before-seen sources to create a groundbreaking portrait of a colossus who dominated half a century of American history and planted the seeds for much of today's conservative political landscape. We remember him as a bulldog--squat frame, bulging wide-set eyes, fearsome jowls--but in 1924, when he became director of the FBI, he had been the trim, dazzling wunderkind of the administrative state, buzzing with energy and big ideas for reform. He transformed a failing law-enforcement backwater, riddled with scandal, into a modern machine. He believed in the power of the federal government to do great things for the nation and its citizens. He also believed that certain people--many of them communists or racial minorities or both-- did not deserve to be included in that American project. Hoover rose to power and then stayed there, decade after decade, using the tools of state to create a personal fiefdom unrivaled in U.S. history. Beverly Gage's monumental work explores the full sweep of Hoover's life and career, from his birth in 1895 to a modest Washington civil-service family through his death in 1972. In her nuanced and definitive portrait, Gage shows how Hoover was more than a one-dimensional tyrant and schemer who strong-armed the rest of the country into submission. As FBI director from 1924 through his death in 1972, he was a confidant, counselor, and adversary to eight U.S. presidents, four Republicans and four Democrats. Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson did the most to empower him, yet his closest friend among the eight was fellow anticommunist warrior Richard Nixon. Hoover was not above blackmail and intimidation, but he also embodied conservative values ranging from anticommunism to white supremacy to a crusading and politicized interpretation of Christianity. This garnered him the admiration of millions of Americans. He stayed in office for so long because many people, from the highest reaches of government down to the grassroots, wanted him there and supported what he was doing, thus creating the template that the political right has followed to transform its party. G-Man places Hoover back where he once stood in American political history--not at the fringes, but at the center--and uses his story to explain the trajectories of governance, policing, race, ideology, political culture, and federal power as they evolved over the course of the 20th century.

FINALISTS

His Name is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa
Mr. B: George Balanchine's 20th Century by Jennifer Homans

His Name Is George Floyd : one man's life and the struggle for racial justice by Robert Samuels; Toluse Olorunnipa
Call Number: BIO FLOYD GEO S
ISBN: 9780593490617
Publication Date: 2022-05-17
A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd's life and legacy--from his family's roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing--telling the singular story of how one man's tragic experience brought about a global movement for change. The events of that day are now tragically familiar: on May 25, 2020, George Floyd became the latest Black person to die at the hands of the police, murdered outside of a Minneapolis convenience store by white officer Derek Chauvin. The video recording of his death set off a series of protests in the United States and around the world, awakening millions to the dire need for reimagining this country's broken systems of policing. But behind a face that would be graffitied onto countless murals, and a name that has become synonymous with civil rights, there is the reality of one man's stolen life: a life beset by suffocating systemic pressures that ultimately proved inescapable. This biography of George Floyd shows the athletic young boy raised in the projects of Houston's Third Ward who would become a father, a partner, a friend, and a man constantly in search of a better life. In retracing Floyd's story, Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa bring to light the determination Floyd carried as he faced the relentless struggle to survive as a Black man in America. Placing his narrative within the larger context of America's deeply troubled history of institutional racism, His Name Is George Floyd examines the Floyd family's roots in slavery and sharecropping, the segregation of his Houston schools, the over-policing of his communities, the devastating snares of the prison system, and his attempts to break free from drug dependence--putting today's inequality into uniquely human terms.
Mr. B : George Balanchine's 20th Century by Jennifer Homans
Call Number: BIO BALAN GEO H
ISBN: 9780812994308
Publication Date: 2022-11-01
The New York Times called him "the Shakespeare of dancing." He appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Arguably the greatest choreographer who ever lived, George Balanchine was one of the cultural titans of the twentieth century. His radical approach to choreography reinvented the art of dance and his richly imaginative ballets made him a legend. Yet, Balanchine's life was as dramatic as his art, coinciding with some of the biggest historical events of his time. Born in Russia under the last Czar, Balanchine experienced the upheavals of World War I, the Russian Revolution, World War II, exile, and the Cold War. He co-founded the New York City Ballet and revolutionized dance in America, pressing it to the forefront of modernism and making it serious and popular art. A man of many muses, Balanchine was married five times and consumed by other loves in between. Both the passions that animated him and the difficulties of his life--personal losses, bouts of ill health, and dark moods of despair--resonate in his more than 100 ballets, which speak of love, loss, mortality, and the transformative power of art. Nearly forty years after his death the full scale of Balanchine's achievement remains unexplored. Jennifer Homans, who studied with Balanchine and has had unprecedented access to his papers and many of those who knew him, has researched every facet of Balanchine's life and times. As much a biography as a vast history of the twentieth century through the lens of one of its greatest artists, Mr. B is the definitive biography by ballet's definitive writer.

2010s

Winner

The First Tycoon : the epic life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, by T. J. Stiles

Finalists

Cheever : a life, by Blake Bailey
Woodrow Wilson : a biography, by John Milton Cooper, Jr.

Winner

Washington : a life, by Ron Chernow

Washington : a life by Ron Chernow
Call Number: 973.4 W318c (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9781594202667
Publication Date: 2010-10-05
Washington, George, 1732-1799.
Presidents -- United States -- Biography.

Finalists

Mrs. Adams in Winter : a journey in the last days of Napoleon
The Publisher : Henry Luce and his American century, by Alan Brinkley

Winner

George F. Kennan : an American life, by John Lewis Gaddis

Finalists

Love and capital : Karl and Jenny Marx and the birth of a revolution, by Mary Gabriel
Malcolm X : a life of reinvention

Winner

The Black Count : glory, revolution, betrayal, and the real Count of Monte Cristo, by Tom Reiss

The Black Count : glory, revolution, betrayal, and the real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss
Call Number: 944 D886r (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780307382467
Publication Date: 2012-09-18
Dumas, Thomas Alexandre, 1762-1806.
Dumas, Alexandre, 1802-1870 -- Family.
France. Armée -- Biography.
Generals -- France -- Biography.
History, Military, 1789-1815.
The Black Count [E-Book] : glory, revolution, betrayal, and the real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss
Call Number: BIO DUMAS THOA B Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9780307952950
Publication Date: 2012-09-18

Finalists

Portrait of a novel : Henry James and the making of an American masterpiece, by Michael Gorra
The Patriarch : the remarkable life and turbulent times of Joseph P. Kennedy, by David Nasaw

Winner

Margaret Fuller : a new American life, by Megan Marshall

Finalists

Jonathan Swift : his life and his world, by Leo Damrosch
Karl Marx : a nineteenth-century life, by Jonathan Sperber

Winner

The Pope and Mussolini : the secret history of Pius XI and the rise of fascism in Europe, by David I. Kertzer

Finalists

Louis Armstrong : master of modernism, by Thomas Brothers
Stalin : Volume I : paradoxes of power, 1878-1928, by Stephen Kotkin

Winner

Barbarian Days : a surfing life, by WIlliam Finnegan

Barbarian Days : a surfing life by William Finnegan
Call Number: 797.3 F514f (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9781594203473
Publication Date: 2015-07-21
Finnegan tells the story of his days surfing around the world, starting in the 1960s. He also describes the changes in the beach cultures of that era (which are not as idyllic as the beach movies or the songs would indicate).

Finalists

Custer's Trials : a life on the frontier of a new America, by T. J. Stiles
The Light of the World : a memoir, by Elizabeth Alexander

Winner

The Return : fathers, sons and the land in between, by Hisham Matar

Finalists

In the Darkroom, by Susan Faludi
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Winner

Prairie Fires : the American dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser

Prairie Fires : the American dream of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser
Call Number: BIO WILDE LAUI F (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9781627792769
Publication Date: 2017-11-21
Millions of readers of Little House on the Prairie believe they know Laura Ingalls--the pioneer girl who survived blizzards and near-starvation on the Great Plains, and the woman who wrote the famous autobiographical books. But the true saga of her life has never been fully told. Now, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Caroline Fraser--the editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House series--masterfully fills in the gaps in Wilder's biography. Revealing the grown-up story behind the most influential childhood epic of pioneer life, she also chronicles Wilder's tumultuous relationship with her journalist daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, setting the record straight regarding charges of ghostwriting that have swirled around the books.

Finalists

Richard Nixon : the life, by John A. Farrell
Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire : a study of genius, mania, and character, by Kay Redfield Jamison

Winner

The New Negro : the life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart

The New Negro : the life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C. Stewart
Call Number: 191 L814n (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780195089578
Publication Date: 2018-02-01
Locke, Alain, 1885-1954.
Lock, Alain, 1885-1954 -- Political and social views.
African American philosophers - -Biography.
African American intellectuals -- Biography.
African American college teachers -- Biography.
African American gay men -- Biography.
Harlem Renaissance.
African American arts -- History.
African Americans -- Intellectual life.

Finalists

Proust's Duchess : how three celebrated women captured the imagination of fin-d-siècle Paris, by Caroline Weber
The Road Not Taken : Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam, by Max Boot

2000s

Winner

Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), by Stacy Schiff

Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff
Call Number: 813.54 N117s (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780375755347
Publication Date: 2000-04-04
Nabokova, Vera.
Nobokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1899-1977 -- Relations with women.
Authors' spouses -- Russia -- Biography.
Authors, Russian -- 20th century -- Biography.

Finalists

Clear Springs : a memoir, by Bobbie Ann Mason
Galileo's Daughter : a historical memoir of science, faith, and love, by Dava Sobel

Winner

W. E. B. Du Bois : the fight for equality and the American century, 1919-1963, by David Levering Lewis

W.E.B. Du Bois : the fight for equality and the American century, 1919-1963 by David Levering Lewis
Call Number: 973.D812L (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780805025347
Publication Date: 2000-10-17
Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963.
African-Americans -- Biography.
African-Americans -- Civil rights.
African-Americans -- History -- 1877-1964.
Civil rights movements -- United States -- History.

Finalists

Johann Sebastian Bach : the learned musicians, by Christoph Wolff
The First American : the life and times of Benjamin Franklin

Winner

John Adams, by David McCullough

John Adams by David McCullough
Call Number: 973.44 A211m (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780684813639
Publication Date: 2001-05-22
Adams, John, 1735-1826.
Presidents -- United States -- Biography.
United States -- Politics and government -- 1775-1783.
United States -- Politics and government -- 1783-1809.

Finalists

An Hour Before Daylight : memories of a rural boyhood, by Jimmy Carter
Grant, by Jean Edward Smith

Winner

Master of the Senate, by Robert A. Caro

Finalists

Beethoven : the music and the life, by Lewis Lockwood
The Fly Swatter, by Nicholas Dawidoff

Winner

Khrushchev : the man and his era, by William Taubman

Finalists

Arshile Gorky : his life and work, by Hayden Herrera
Isaac Newton, by James Gleick

Winner

de Kooning : an American master, by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan

Finalists

Under a Wild Sky : John James Audubon and the making of the birds of America, by William Souder
Will in the World : how Shakespeare became Shakespeare, by Stephen Greenblatt

Winner

American Prometheus : the triumph and tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

Finalists

The Peabody Sisters : three women who ignited American Romanticism, by Megan Marshall
The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion

Winner

The Most Famous Man in America : the biography of Henry Ward Beecher, by Debby Applegate

Finalists

Andrew Carnegie, by David Nasaw
John Wilkes : the scandalous father of civil liberty, by Arthur H. Cash

Winner

Eden's Outcasts : the story of Louisa May Alcott and her father, by John Matteson

Finalists

The Life of Kingsley Amis, by Zachary Leader
The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein, by Martin Duberman

Winner

American Lion : Andrew Jackson in the White House, by Jon Meacham

American Lion : Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham
Call Number: 973.5 J12m (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9781400063253
Publication Date: 2008-11-11
Jackson, Andrew, 1767-1845.
Jackson, Andrew, 1767-1845 -- Family.
Jackson, Andrew, 1767-1845 -- Friends and associates.
Presidents -- United States -- Biography.
United States -- Politics and government -- 1829-1837.
American Lion [OverDrive E-Book] : Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham
Call Number: OverDrive E-Book
ISBN: 9781588368225
Publication Date: 2008

Finalists

The Bin Ladens : an Arabian family in the American century, by Steve Coll
Traitor to His Class : the privileged life and radical presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

1990s

Winner

Machiavelli in Hell, by Sebastian de Grazia

Finalists

A First-Class Temperament: the emergence of Frankling Roosevelt, by Geoffrey C. Ward
Clear Pictures : first loves, first guides, by Reynolds Price
The Road from Coorain, by Jill Ker Conway

Winner

Jackson Pollock, by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith

Jackson Pollock : an American saga by Steven Naifeh; Gregory White Smith
Call Number: 759.13 P776n (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780517560846
Publication Date: 1989-12-24
Pollock, Jackson, 1912-1956.
Painters -- United States -- Biography.

Finalists

Alfred I. Du Pont : the man and his family, by Joseph Frazier
The Five of Hearts : an intimate portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends 1880-1918, by Patricia O'Toole

Winner

Fortunate Son : the healing of a Vietnam vet, by Lewis B. Puller

Finalists

Frederick Douglas, by William S. McFeely
Orwell : the authorized biography, by Michael Shelden

Frederick Douglass by William S. McFeely
Call Number: 973.7114 D737m (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780393354423
Publication Date: 1991-01-01
Douglass, Frederick, 1817?-1895.
Abolitionists -- African-Americans -- Biography.
Slavery -- United States -- Anti-slavery movements.

Winner

Truman, by David McCullough

Truman by David McCullough
Call Number: BIO TRUMA HARS M (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780671456542
Publication Date: 1992-06-15
The life of Harry S. Truman is one of the greatest of American stories, filled with vivid characters—Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Wallace Truman, George Marshall, Joe McCarthy, and Dean Acheson—and dramatic events. In this riveting biography, acclaimed historian David McCullough not only captures the man—a more complex, informed, and determined man than ever before imagined—but also the turbulent times in which he rose, boldly, to meet unprecedented challenges. The last president to serve as a living link between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, Truman’s story spans the raw world of the Missouri frontier, World War I, the powerful Pendergast machine of Kansas City, the legendary Whistle-Stop Campaign of 1948, and the decisions to drop the atomic bomb, confront Stalin at Potsdam, send troops to Korea, and fire General MacArthur. Drawing on newly discovered archival material and extensive interviews with Truman’s own family, friends, and Washington colleagues, McCullough tells the deeply moving story of the seemingly ordinary “man from Missouri” who was perhaps the most courageous president in our history.

Finalists

Genius : the life and science of Richard Rynman, by James Gleick
Kissinger, by Walter Isaacson

Genius : the life and science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick
Call Number: 530 F435gL (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780679408369
Publication Date: 1992-09-29
Feynman, Richard Phillips.
Physics -- History -- 20th century.
Physicists -- United States -- Biography.

Kissinger : a biography by Walter Isaacson
Call Number: BIO KISSI HEN I (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780671663230
Publication Date: 1992
By the time Henry Kissinger was made secretary of state in 1973, he had become, according to the Gallup Poll, the most admired person in America and one of the most unlikely celebrities ever to capture the world's imagination. Yet Kissinger was also reviled by large segments of the American public, ranging from liberal intellectuals to conservative activists. Kissinger explores the relationship between this complex man’s personality and the foreign policy he pursued. Drawing on extensive interviews with Kissinger as well as 150 other sources, including US presidents and his business clients, this first full-length biography makes use of many of Kissinger’s private papers and classified memos to tell his uniquely American story. The result is an intimate narrative, filled with surprising revelations, that takes this grandly colorful statesman from his childhood as a persecuted Jew in Nazi Germany, through his tortured relationship with Richard Nixon, to his later years as a globe-trotting business consultant.

Winner

W. E. B. Du Bois : a biography of a race 1868-1919, by David Levering Lewis

Finalists

Genet : a biography, by Edmund White
In Extremis : the life of Laura Riding, by Deborah Baker

Winner

Harriet Beecher Stow : a life, by Joan D. Hedrick

Harriet Beecher Stowe : a life by Joan D. Hedrick
Call Number: 813.3 S892h (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780195096392
Publication Date: 1995-06-01
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896 -- Biography.
Authors, American -- 19th century -- Biography.

Finalists

Hugo Black : a biography, by Roger K. Newman
Saint-Exupery : a biography, by Stacy Schiff

Winner

God : a biography, by Jack Miles

God : a biography by Jack Miles
Call Number: 231 G577m (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780679418337
Publication Date: 1995-03-21
Bible. Old Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
God -- Biblical teaching.
Bible as literature.

Finalists

John Sloan : painter and rebel, by John Loughery
Mozart : a life, by Maynard Solomon

Winner

Angela's Ashes : a memoir, by Frank McCourt

Finalists

Herman Melville : a biography, Volume 1, 1819-1851, by Hershel Parker
In the Wilderness : coming of age in unknown country, by Kim Barnes

Winner

Personal History, by Katharine Graham

Personal History by Katharine Graham
Call Number: 070.5 G797g (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780394585857
Publication Date: 1997-02-03
Graham, Katharine, 1917-2001.
Washington post.
Newspaper publishing -- Washington (D.C.) -- History -- 20th century.
Publishers and publishing -- United States -- Biography.

Finalists

Aflred C. Kinsey : a public-private life, by James H. Jones
Whittaker Chambers : a biography, by Sam Tanenhaus

Winner

Lindbergh, by A. Scott Berg

Lindbergh by A. Scott Berg
Call Number: 629.13 L742be (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780425170410
Publication Date: 1999-09-01
Lindbergh, Charles A. (Charles Augustus), 1902-1974.
Air pilots -- United States -- Biography.

Finalists

A Beautiful Mind, by Sylvia Nasar
At Home with the Marquis de Sade : a life, by Francine du Plessix Gray

1980s

Winner

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
Call Number: 973.911 R781n (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780812958638
Publication Date: 1979-03-30
Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919.
Presidents -- United States -- Biography.
United States -- Politics and government -- 1901-1909.
New York (State) -- Politics and government -- 1865-1950.

Finalists

Being Bernard Berenson, by Meryle Secrest
Bernard Berenson : the making of a connoisseur, by Ernest Samuels
The Duke of Deception, by Geoffrey Wolff

Winner

Peter the Great : his life and world, by Robert K. Massie

Peter the Great : his life and world by Robert K. Massie
Call Number: 947.05 P478m (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780345298065
Publication Date: 1980-09-12
Peter I, Emperor of Russia, 1672-1725.
Soviet Union -- History -- Peter I, 1689-1725.
Soviet Union -- Kings and rulers -- Biography.

Finalists

Walt Whitman : a life, by Justin Kaplan
Walter Lippmann and the American Century, by Ronald Steel

Winner

Grant : a biography, by William McFeely

Finalists

Mornings on Horseback, by David McCullough
Waldo Emerson, by Gay Wilson

Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough
Call Number: 973.911 R781m (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780671227111
Publication Date: 1981-06-30
Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919 -- Childhood and youth.
Presidents -- United States -- Biography.

Waldo Emerson by Gay W. Allen
Call Number: 814.3 E53a (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780670748662
Publication Date: 1981-10-29
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882.
Authors, American -- 19th century -- Biography.
Transcendentalists (New England) -- Biography.

Winner

Growing Up, by Russell Baker

Growing Up by Russell Baker
Call Number: 070 B168g (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780312922672
Publication Date: 1982-10-01
Baker, Russell, 1925- -- Biography -- YOuth
Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography.
Journalists -- United States -- Biography.

Finalists

Churchill : young man in a hurry, 1874-1915, by Ted Morgan
Thomas E. Dewey and His Times, by Richard Norton Smith

Winner

Booker T. Washington : the wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915, by Louis R. Harlan

Finalists

Black Apollo of Science : the life of Ernest Everett Just, by Kenneth Manning
Thomas Carlyle : a biography, by Fred Kaplan

Winner

The Life and Times of Cotton Mather, by Kenneth Silverman

Finalists

Becoming William James, by Howard M. Feinstein
The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton, by Michael Mott

Winner

Louise Bogan : a portrait, by Elizabeth Frank

Louise Bogan : a portrait by Elizabeth Frank
Call Number: BIO BROGA LOU F (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780231063159
Publication Date: 1986-11-19
A full-scale biography of the distinguished lyric poet, translator, and critic details the highs and lows of her elegant and sorrowful life and the steady growth and influence of her work.

Finalists

A Hidden Childhood : a Jewish girl's sanctuary in a French convent, 1942-1945, by Frida Scheps Weinstein
George Washington Williams : a biography, by John Hope Franklin

Winner

Bearing the Cross : Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, by David J. Garrow

Finalists

Dostoevsky : the stir of liberation, 1860-1865, by Joseph Frank
Murrow : his life and times, by A. M. Sperber
The Life and Times of Congressman John Quincy Adams, by Leonard L. Richards

Dostoevsky : the seeds of revolt, 1821-1849 by Joseph Frank
Call Number: 891.733 D724 Criticism
ISBN: 9780691013558
Publication Date: 1979-05-21
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881.

Murrow : his life and times by A. M. Sperber
Call Number: 070 M984s (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780823218820
Publication Date: 1986-06-01
Murrow, Edward R.
Journalists -- United States -- Biography.

Winner

Look Homeward : a life of Thomas Wolfe, by David Herbert Donald

Finalists

George Santayana : a biography, by John McCormick
Hemingway, by Kenneth S. Lynn

Winner

Oscar Wilde, by Richard Ellmann

Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellmann
Call Number: BIO WILDE OSC E (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780394759845
Publication Date: 1988-01-12
Traces the life and career of Oscar Wilde from his boyhood in Dublin to his tragic death in exile at age forty-six.

Finalists

A Bright Shining Lie : John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam, by Neil Sheehan
Freud : a life for our time, by Peter Gay
The Life of Langston Hughes : Volume II, 1941-1967 : I dream a world, by Arnold Rampersad

A Bright Shining Lie : John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan
Call Number: BIO VANN JOHP S (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780394484471
Publication Date: 1988-09-12
The story of Lt. Col. John Paul Vann, who went to Vietnam in 1962 and served as a civilian worker in the pacification program until his death in 1972.

Freud : a life for our time by Peter Gay
Call Number: 150.1952 F889g (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780393025170
Publication Date: 1988-04-01
Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939.
Psychoanalysts -- Austria -- Biography.
Psychoanalysis -- History.

1970s

Winner

Huey Long, by T. Harry Williams

Winner

Robert Frost : the years of triumph, 1915-1938, by Lawrance Thompson

Winner

Eleanor and Franklin, by Joseph P. Lash

Eleanor and Franklin by Joseph P. Lash; Franklin D. Roosevelt (Introduction by); Arthur M. Schlesinger (Foreword by)
Call Number: 973.917 R780m (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780393074598
Publication Date: 1971-10-17
Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962.
Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945.

Winner

Luce and His Empire, by W. A. Swanberg

Winner

O'Neill, Son and Artist, by Louis Sheaffer

Winner

The Power Broker : Robert Moses and the fall of New York, by Robert Caro

Winner

Edith Wharton : a biography, by R. W. B. Lewis

Winner

A Prince of Our Disorder : the life of T. E. Lawrence, by John E. Mack

Winner

Samuel Johnson, by Walter Jackson Bate

Winner

Days of Sorrow and Pain : Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews, by Leonard Baker

1960s

Winner

John Paul Jones, by Samuel Eliot Morison

John Paul Jones : a sailor's biography by Samuel Eliot Morison
Call Number: 973.3 J77m (Adult Nonfiction)
Publication Date: 1959
Jones, John Paul, 1747-1792.

Winner

Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, by David Donald

Winner

No award given

Winner

Henry James, by Leon Edel

Winner

John Keats, by Walter Jackson Bate

Winner

Henry Adams, three volumes, by Ernest Samuels

Winner

A Thousand Days, by Arthur M. Schlesinger

Winner

Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, by Justin Kaplan

Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain : a biography by Justin Kaplan
Call Number: 818.4 T969k (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780743251396
Publication Date: 2003-04-01
Twain, Mark, 1835-1910.

Winner

Memoirs, by George F. Kennan

Winner

The Man From New York : John Quinn and his friends, by Benjamin Lawrence Reid

1950s

Winner

John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy, by Samuel Flagg Bemis

Winner

John C. Calhoun : American portrait, by Margaret Louise Coit

John C. Calhoun : American portrait by Margaret L. Coit
Call Number: 973.6 C152 (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780131124097
Publication Date: 1970-01-01
Calhoun, John C. (John Caldwell), 1782-1850.

Winner

Charles Evans Hughes, by Merlo J. Pusey

Winner

Edmund Pendleton 1721-1803, by David J. Mays

Winner

The Spirit of St. Louis, by Charles A. Lindbergh

The Spirit of St. Louis by Charles A. Lindbergh
Call Number: 629.1309 L742s (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780684144214
Publication Date: 1953
Spirit of St. Louis (Airplane)
Aeronautics -- Flights.

Winner

The Taft Story, by William S. White

Winner

Benjamin Henry Latrobe, by Talbot Faulkner Hamlin

Winner

Profiles in Courage, by John F. Kennedy

Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy
Call Number: 973 K35p (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780060530624
Publication Date: 2003-03-18
United States. Congress. Senate -- Biography.
Legislators -- United States -- Biography.
Courage -- United States.
United States -- Politics and government.

Winner

George Washington, Volumes I-VII, by Douglas Southall Freeman with John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth

Winner

Woodrow Wilson, by Arthur Walworth

1940s

Winner

Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters, Vols. VII and VIII, by Ray Stannard Baker

Winner

Jonathan Edwards, 1703-1758 : a biography, by Ola Elizabeth Winslow

Winner

Crusader in Crinoline, by Forrest Wilson

Winner

Admiral of the Ocean Sea : a life of Christopher Columbus, by Samuel Eliot Morison

Admiral of the Ocean Sea : a life of Christopher Columbus by Samuel Eliot Morison
Call Number: 970.015 C726m (Adult Nonfiction)
ISBN: 9780316584784
Publication Date: 1942
Columbus, Christopher.

Winner

The American Leonardo : the life of Samuel F. B. Morse, by Carleton Mabee

Winner

George Bancroft : Brahmin rebel, by Russell Blaine Nye

Winner

Son of the Wilderness, by Linnie Marsh Wolfe

Winner

The Autobiography of William Allen White, by William Allen White

Winner

Forgotten First Citizen : John Bigelow, by Margaret Clapp

Winner

Roosevelt and Hopkins, by Robert E. Sherwood

1930s

Winner

The Raven : a biography of Sam Houston, by Marquis James

The Raven : a biography of Sam Houston by Marquis James
Call Number: G-TX Biography Houston (Genealogy Collection)
ISBN: 9780292770409
Publication Date: 1929
Houston, Sam, 1793-1863.

Winner

Charles W. Eliot, by Henry James

Winner

Theodore Roosevelt, by Henry F. Pringle

Winner

Grover Cleveland, by Allan Nevins

Winner

John Hay, by Tyler Dennett

Winner

R. E. Lee, by Douglas S. Freeman

Winner

The Thought and Character of William James : as revealed in unpublished correspondence and notes, together with his published writings, by Ralph Barton Perry

Winner

Hamilton Fish : the inner history of the Grant administration, by Allan Nevins

Winners

Pedlar's Progress, by Odell Shepard
The Life of Andrew Jackson, by Marquis James

Pulitzer Prize

2020s

Winner

Sontag : Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser

Finalists

Our Man : Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century by George Packer

Parisian Lives : Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me by Dierdre Blair

Winner

The Dead Are Arising : the Life of Malcolm X by Les Payne and Tamara Payne

Finalists

Red Comet : the Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark

Stranger in the Shogun's City : a Japanese Woman and Her World by Amy Stanley

Winner

Chasing Me to My Grave: an artist's memoir of the Jim Crow South by the late Winfred Rembert as told to Erin I. Kelly

Finalists

Pessoa: a biography by Richard Zenith

The Doctors Blackwell: how two pioneering sisters brought medicine to women and women to medicine by Janice P. Nimura

WINNER

G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage

FINALISTS

His Name is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa

Mr. B: George Balanchine's 20th Century by Jennifer Homans

2010s

Winner

The First Tycoon : the epic life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, by T. J. Stiles

Finalists

Cheever : a life, by Blake Bailey

Woodrow Wilson : a biography, by John Milton Cooper, Jr.

Winner

Washington : a life, by Ron Chernow

Finalists

Mrs. Adams in Winter : a journey in the last days of Napoleon

The Publisher : Henry Luce and his American century, by Alan Brinkley

Winner

George F. Kennan : an American life, by John Lewis Gaddis

Finalists

Love and capital : Karl and Jenny Marx and the birth of a revolution, by Mary Gabriel

Malcolm X : a life of reinvention

Winner

The Black Count : glory, revolution, betrayal, and the real Count of Monte Cristo, by Tom Reiss

Finalists

Portrait of a novel : Henry James and the making of an American masterpiece, by Michael Gorra

The Patriarch : the remarkable life and turbulent times of Joseph P. Kennedy, by David Nasaw

Winner

Margaret Fuller : a new American life, by Megan Marshall

Finalists

Jonathan Swift : his life and his world, by Leo Damrosch

Karl Marx : a nineteenth-century life, by Jonathan Sperber

Winner

The Pope and Mussolini : the secret history of Pius XI and the rise of fascism in Europe, by David I. Kertzer

Finalists

Louis Armstrong : master of modernism, by Thomas Brothers

Stalin : Volume I : paradoxes of power, 1878-1928, by Stephen Kotkin

Winner

Barbarian Days : a surfing life, by WIlliam Finnegan

Finalists

Custer's Trials : a life on the frontier of a new America, by T. J. Stiles

The Light of the World : a memoir, by Elizabeth Alexander

Winner

The Return : fathers, sons and the land in between, by Hisham Matar

Finalists

In the Darkroom, by Susan Faludi

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Winner

Prairie Fires : the American dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser

Finalists

Richard Nixon : the life, by John A. Farrell

Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire : a study of genius, mania, and character, by Kay Redfield Jamison

Winner

The New Negro : the life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart

Finalists

Proust's Duchess : how three celebrated women captured the imagination of fin-d-siècle Paris, by Caroline Weber

The Road Not Taken : Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam, by Max Boot

2000s

Winner

Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), by Stacy Schiff

Finalists

Clear Springs : a memoir, by Bobbie Ann Mason

Galileo's Daughter : a historical memoir of science, faith, and love, by Dava Sobel

Winner