National Book Award 1930s: A decade of winners

The National Book Award arrived on the literary scene in 1935 as America grappled with economic collapse and social upheaval, and from the very beginning, the award revealed something crucial about the reading public of the Depression era: they hungered for true stories and real experience. That inaugural decade was dominated by nonfiction winners who captured the imagination of a nation seeking connection, understanding, and escape through accounts of exploration, historical inquiry, and personal adventure. Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s North to the Orient, published that first year, set the tone—a memoir of aviation and discovery that spoke to American ambitions even as the country struggled economically. The award’s early years would become a showcase for narratives of remarkable lives lived in distant places and bygone eras.

What’s striking about the 1930s National Book Award winners is how they reflected a particular hunger for biography and travel writing, genres that allowed readers to transcend their immediate circumstances. The decade brought us The Flowering of New England: 1815–1865, a sweeping cultural history that explored America’s literary past; Carl Crow’s Four Hundred Million Customers, a businessman’s intimate portrait of China during turbulent times; and the luminous Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a pilot-poet’s meditation on flight and human meaning. These weren’t escapist fantasies—they were rigorous, often scholarly works that took readers seriously as seekers of knowledge and inspiration. The National Book Award had established itself not as a prize for literary experimentation or avant-garde fiction, but as a recognition of ambitious nonfiction that expanded the boundaries of human experience for ordinary readers facing extraordinary times.

Below, you’ll find the complete list of National Book Award winners from this formative decade.

1935

Nonfiction

• North to the Orient by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

1936

Nonfiction

• The Country Kitchen by Della T. Lutes
• Winner by The Flowering of New England: 1815–1865

1937

Nonfiction

• Four Hundred Million Customers: The Experiences—Some Happy, Some Sad, of an American Living in China, and What They Taught Him by Carl Crow
• Winner by Madame Curie

1938

Nonfiction

• The World Was My Garden: Travels of a Plant Explorer by David Fairchild
• Winner by With Malice Toward Some
• Winner by Listen! The Wind

1939

Nonfiction

• Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry