National Book Award Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
National Book Awards are annual literary awards presented since 1950 for the best American book published in the preceding year, presently in each of four categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people's literature. Over the years awards in several categories have been retired or subsumed into supercategories. To be eligible for entry, a book must be published in the United States and the author must be a living U.S. citizen. The winners, selected by five-member, independent judging panels for each genre, receive a $10,000 cash award and a crystal sculpture.
National Book Award Winners (Fiction)
| 1950 | Nelson Algren | The Man With The Golden Arm |
| 1951 | William Faulkner | The Collected Stories of William Faulkner |
| 1952 | James Jones | From Here to Eternity |
| 1953 | Ralph Ellison | Invisible Man |
| 1954 | Saul Bellow | The Adventures of Augie March |
| 1955 | William Faulkner | A Fable |
| 1956 | John O'Hara | Ten North Frederick |
| 1957 | Wright Morris | The Field of Vision |
| 1958 | John Cheever | The Wapshot Chronicle |
| 1959 | Bernard Malamud | The Magic Barre |
| 1960 | Philip Roth | Goodbye, Columbus |
| 1961 | Conrad Richter | The Waters of Kronos |
| 1962 | Walker Percy | The Moviegoer |
| 1963 | J. F. Powers | Morte D'Urban |
| 1964 | John Updike | The Centaur |
| 1965 | Saul Bellow | Herzog |
| 1966 | Katherine Anne Porter | The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter |
| 1967 | Bernard Malamud | The Fixer |
| 1968 | Thornton Wilder | The Eighth Day |
| 1969 | Jerzy Kosinski | Steps |
| 1970 | Joyce Carol Oates | Them |
| 1971 | Saul Bellow | Mr. Sammler's Planet |
| 1972 | Flannery O'Connor | The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor |
| 1973 | John Barth | Chimera |
| 1974 | Thomas Pynchon | Gravity's Rainbow |
| 1975 | Robert Stone | Dog Soldiers |
| 1976 | William Gaddis | Jr |
| 1977 | Wallace Stegner | The Spectator Bird |
| 1978 | Mary Lee Settle | Blood Ties |
| 1979 | Tim O'Brien | Going After Cacciato |
| 1980 Hardcover | William Styron | Sophie's Choice |
| 1980 Paperback | John Irving | The World According to Garp |
| 1981 Hardcover | Wright Morris | Plains Song |
| 1981 Paperback | John Cheever | The Stories of John Cheever |
| 1982 Hardcover | John Updike | Rabbit is Rich |
| 1982 Paperback | William Maxwell | So Long, See You Tomorrow |
| 1983 Hardcover | Alice Walker | The Color Purple |
| 1983 Paperback | Eudora Welty | Collected Stories of Eudora Welty |
| 1984 | Ellen Gilchrist | |
| 1985 | Don DeLillo | White Noise |
| 1986 | E.L. Doctorow | World's Fair |
| 1987 | Larry Heinemann | Paco's Story |
| 1988 | Pete Dexter | Paris Trout |
| 1989 | John Casey | Spartina |
| 1990 | Charles Johnson | Middle Passage |
| 1991 | Norman Rush | Mating |
| 1992 | Cormac McCarthy | All the Pretty Horses |
| 1993 | E. Annie Proulx | The Shipping News |
| 1994 | William Gaddis | A Frolic of His Own |
| 1995 | Philip Roth | Sabbath's Theater |
| 1996 | Andrea Barrett | Ship Fever and Other Stories |
| 1997 | Charles Frazier | Cold Mountain |
| 1998 | Alice McDermott | Charming Billy |
| 1999 | Ha Jin | Waiting |
| 2000 | Susan Sontag | In America |
| 2001 | Jonathan Franzen | The Corrections |
| 2002 | Julia Glass | Three Junes |
| 2003 | Shirley Hazzard | The Great Fire |
National Book Award Winners (Nonfiction)
| 1950 | Ralph L. Rusk | Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| 1951 | Newton Arvin | Herman Melville |
| 1952 | Rachel Carson | The Sea Around Us |
| 1953 | Bernard A. De Voto | The Course of Empire |
| 1954 | Bruce Catton | A Stillness at Appomattox |
| 1955 | Joseph Wood Krutch | The Measure of Man |
| 1956 | Herbert Kubly | An American in Italy |
| 1957 | George F. Kennan | Russia Leaves the War |
| 1958 | Catherine Drinker Bowen | The Lion and the Throne |
| 1959 | J. Christopher Herold | |
| 1960 | Richard Ellmann | James Joyce |
| 1961 | William L. Shirer | The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich |
| 1962 | Lewis Mumford | |
| 1963 | Leon Edel |
National Book Award Winners (Arts and Letters)
| 1964 | Aileen Ward | |
| 1965 | Eleanor Clark | Oysters of Lockmariaquer |
| 1966 | Janet Flanner | Paris Journal, 1944-1965 |
| 1967 | Justin Kaplan | |
| 1968 | William Troy | Selected Essays |
| 1969 | Norman Mailer | |
National Book Award Winners (History and Biography)
| 1964 | William H. McNeill | |
| 1965 | Louis Fischer | The Life of Lenin |
| 1966 | Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr | A Thousand Days |
| 1967 | Peter Gay | |
| 1968 | George F. Kennan | |
| 1969 | Winthrop D. Jordan |
National Book Award Winners (Science, Philosophy and Religion)
| 1964 | Christopher Tunnard & Boris Pushkarev | Man-made America |
| 1965 | Norbert Wiener | |
| 1966 | No award given | |
| 1967 | Oscar Lewis | La Vida |
| 1968 | Jonathan Kozol | Death at an Early Age |
National Book Award Winners (The Sciences)
| 1969 | Robert J. Lifton |
National Book Award Winners (Poetry)
| 1950 | William Carlos Williams | |
| 1951 | Wallace Stevens | The Auroras of Autumn |
| 1952 | Marianne Moore | Collected Poems |
| 1953 | Archibald MacLeish | Collected Poems, 1917-1952 |
| 1954 | Conrad Aiken | Collected Poems |
| 1955 | Wallace Stevens | The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens |
| 1956 | W.H. Auden | The Shield of Achilles |
| 1957 | Richard Wilbur | Things of the World |
| 1958 | Robert Penn Warren | |
| 1959 | Theodore Roethke | Words for the Wind |
| 1960 | Robert Lowell | Life Studies |
| 1961 | Randall Jarrell | The Woman at the Washington Zoo |
| 1962 | Alan Dugan | Poems |
| 1963 | William Stafford | Traveling Through the Dark |
| 1964 | John Crowe Ransom | Selected Poems |
| 1965 | Theodore Roethke | The Far Field |
| 1966 | James Dickey | |
| 1967 | James Merrill | Nights and Days |
| 1968 | Robert Bly | The Light Around the Body |
| 1969 | John Berryman | His Toy, His Dream, His Rest |
National Book Award Winners (Translation)
| 1967 | Gregory Rabassa | Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch Willard Trask -- Casanova's History of My Life |
| 1968 | Howard & Edna Hong | Soren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers |
| 1969 | William Weaver | Calvino's Cosmicomics |
National Book Award Winners (Children's Literature)
| 1969 | Meindert DeJong | Journey from Peppermint Street |