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Award Winning Biographies and Memoirs
208 books from 13 lists, 1845 to 2026
A great biography does two jobs at once, telling one life properly and using it to explain an age. The Pulitzer Prize for Biography has been picking them since 1917 and every winner is here, joined by the memoirs and life writing that won general non fiction prizes instead of the category built for them.
Books by prize
One shelf per list, newest first on each. The prize name opens its full list.
- 2026 Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution
- 2025 Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life
- 2024 King: A Life
- 2024 Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
- 2023 G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century
- 2022 Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist's Memoir of the Jim Crow South
- 2021 The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X
- 2020 Sontag: Her Life and Work
- 2019 The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke
- 2018 Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
- 2017 The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
- 2016 Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
- 2015 The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe
- 2014 Margaret Fuller: A New American Life
- 2013 The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo
- 2012 George F. Kennan: An American Life
- 2011 Washington: A Life
- 2010 The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
- 2009 American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House
- 2008 Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father
- 2007 The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher
- 2006 American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
- 2005 de Kooning: An American Master
- 2004 Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
- 2003 Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
- 2002 John Adams
- 2001 W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963
- 2000 Vera, Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov
- 1999 Lindbergh
- 1998 Personal History
- 1997 Angela's Ashes: A Memoir
- 1996 God: A Biography
- 1995 Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life
- 1994 W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919
- 1993 Truman
- 1992 Fortunate Son: The Autobiography of Lewis B. Puller Jr.
- 1991 Jackson Pollock: An American Saga
- 1990 Machiavelli in Hell
- 1989 Oscar Wilde
- 1988 Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe
- 1987 Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
- 1986 Louise Bogan: A Portrait
- 1985 The Life and Times of Cotton Mather
- 1984 Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915
- 1983 Growing Up
- 1982 Grant: A Biography
- 1981 Peter the Great: His Life and World
- 1980 The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
- 1979 Days of Sorrow and Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews
- 1978 Samuel Johnson
- 1977 A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence
- 1976 Edith Wharton: A Biography
- 1975 The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
- 1974 O'Neill, Son and Artist
- 1973 Luce and His Empire
- 1972 Eleanor and Franklin
- 1971 Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 1915–1938
- 1970 Huey Long
- 1969 The Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends
- 1968 Memoirs
- 1967 Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain
- 1966 A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House
- 1965 Henry Adams
- 1964 John Keats
- 1963 Henry James
- 1961 Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War
- 1960 John Paul Jones
- 1959 Woodrow Wilson, American Prophet
- 1958 George Washington, Vols. I-VII
- 1957 Profiles in Courage
- 1956 Benjamin Henry Latrobe
- 1955 The Taft Story
- 1954 The Spirit of St. Louis
- 1953 Edmund Pendleton 1721–1803
- 1952 Charles Evans Hughes
- 1951 John C. Calhoun: American Portrait
- 1950 John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy
- 1949 Roosevelt and Hopkins
- 1948 Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow
- 1947 The Autobiography of William Allen White
- 1946 Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir
- 1945 George Bancroft: Brahmin Rebel
- 1944 The American Leonardo: The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse
- 1943 Admiral of the Ocean Sea
- 1942 Crusader in Crinoline: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe
- 1941 Jonathan Edwards, 1703–1758: A Biography
- 1940 Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters, Vols. VII and VIII
- 1939 Benjamin Franklin
- 1938 Pedlar's Progress: The Life of Bronson Alcott
- 1938 The Life of Andrew Jackson
- 1937 Hamilton Fish
- 1936 The Thought and Character of William James
- 1935 R. E. Lee
- 1934 John Hay
- 1933 Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage
- 1932 Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography
- 1931 Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard University, 1869–1909
- 1930 The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston
- 1929 The Training of an American
- 1928 The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas
- 1927 Whitman
- 1926 The Life of Sir William Osler
- 1925 Barrett Wendell and His Letters
- 1924 From Immigrant to Inventor
- 1923 The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page
- 1922 A Daughter of the Middle Border
- 1921 The Americanization of Edward Bok
- 1920 The Life of John Marshall
- 1919 The Education of Henry Adams
- 1918 Benjamin Franklin, Self-Revealed
- 1917 Julia Ward Howe
- 2025 How to End a Story
- 2024 Question 7
- 2022 Super-Infinite
- 2020 One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time
- 2014 H Is for Hawk
- 2013 The Pike
- 2006 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
- 2005 Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson
- 2003 Pushkin: A Biography
- 2000 Berlioz: Servitude and Greatness
- 2023 Septology
- 2022 The Years
- 2013 Dear Life
- 1987 Less Than One
- 2020 Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America
- 2019 Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
- 2016 Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America
- 2012 Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
- 2011 The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
- 2009 The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
- 1995 No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II
- 1991 A Midwife's Tale
- 1976 Lamy of Santa Fe
- 1975 Jefferson and His Time
- 1971 Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom
- 1970 Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department
- 1960 In the Days of McKinley
- 1943 Paul Revere and the World He Lived In
- 1940 Abraham Lincoln: The War Years
- 1932 My Experiences in the World War
- 2020 The Dead Are Arising
- 2019 The Yellow House
- 2018 The New Negro
- 2015 Between the World and Me
- 2010 Just Kids
- 2009 The First Tycoon
- 2005 The Year of Magical Thinking
- 2003 Waiting for Snow in Havana
- 2002 Master of the Senate
- 2001 The Noonday Demon
- 1997 American Sphinx
- 1996 An American Requiem
- 1992 Becoming a Man
- 1984 Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy
- 1981 China Men
- 1979 The Snow Leopard
- 1975 The Life of Emily Dickinson
- 1974 Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian
- 1973 George Washington: Anguish and Farewell
- 1970 Huey Long
- 1968 Memoirs (1925-1950)
- 1965 The Life of Lenin
- 1963 Henry James, Vol. II: The Conquest of London and Vol. III: The Middle Years
- 1960 James Joyce
- 1959 Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël
- 1958 The Lion and the Throne
- 1956 An American in Italy
- 1951 Herman Melville
- 1950 The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson
- 2018 Educated
- 2006 The Blind Side
- 1997 Into Thin Air
- 1977 Dispatches
- 1947 The Diary of a Young Girl
- 1933 Testament of Youth
- 2017 Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat
- 2016 Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World's Most Famous Bear
- 2004 The Man Who Walked Between the Towers
- 1999 Snowflake Bentley
- 1994 Grandfather's Journey
- 1984 The Glorious Flight: Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot
- 1940 Abraham Lincoln
- 1999 The Hours
- 1995 The Stone Diaries
- 1988 Lincoln: A Photobiography
- 1956 Carry On, Mr. Bowditch
- 1951 Amos Fortune, Free Man
- 1940 Daniel Boone
- 1934 Invincible Louisa
- 1985 Yin
- 1960 Heart's Needle
- 1959 Selected Poems 1928–1958
- 1958 Promises: Poems 1954–1956
- 1942 The Dust Which Is God