National Book Critics Circle Award Biography Winners — Complete List (1983–2025) Home › National Book Critics Circle Award › Biography A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America’s Disabled by Alex Green 2025NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar by Cynthia Carr 2024NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage by Jonny Steinberg 2023NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage 2022NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler by Rebecca Donner 2021NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World by Amy Stanley 2020NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth by Josh Levin 2019NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous by Christopher Bonanos 2018NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser 2017NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin 2016NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon 2015NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr 2014NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World by Leo Damrosch 2013NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro 2012NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis 2011NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop How To Live, Or A Life Of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell 2010NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey 2009NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop The World is What it is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul by Patrick French 2008NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer by Tim Jeal 2007NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips 2006NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai BirdandMartin J. Sherwin 2005NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop de Kooning: An American Master by Mark StevensandAnnalyn Swan 2004NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Khrushchev: The Man and His Era by William Taubman 2003NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, Vol. II by Janet Browne 2002NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson by Adam Sisman 2001NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix 2000NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White by Henry Wiencek 1999NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar 1998NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II by James Tobin 1997NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt 1996NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson by Robert Polito 1995NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Shot in the Heart by Mikal Gilmore 1994NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Genet by Edmund White 1993NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World by Carol Brightman 1992NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Patrimony: A True Story by Philip Roth 1991NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. II by Robert A. Caro 1990NBCCBiography Amazon A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt by Geoffrey C. Ward 1989NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellmann 1988NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World by Donald R. Howard 1987NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. I: 1902-1941 by Arnold Rampersad 1986NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Henry James: A Life by Leon Edel 1985NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850–1859 by Joseph Frank 1984NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop Minor Characters by Joyce Johnson 1983NBCCBiography AmazonBookshop
