Living Canon

National Book Award 1936: Complete list of winners

The National Book Award, still in its relative infancy as America’s premier literary honor, had only recently established itself as the nation’s premier recognition for literary excellence when it announced its 1936 winners. That year’s selections reflected the award’s emerging commitment to celebrating substantive American letters across multiple categories, spotlighting works that captured the zeitgeist of a Depression-era nation hungry for both escape and understanding. The National Book Award 1936 proved particularly significant for nonfiction, as the organization doubled down on recognizing serious works of history and memoir that deepened readers’ connection to American identity and heritage.

The nonfiction winners that year demonstrated the breadth of storytelling the award was beginning to champion. Della T. Lutes’ The Country Kitchen earned recognition for its intimate portrait of rural American life, while Van Wyck Brooks’ The Flowering of New England: 1815–1865 claimed the top prize with its sweeping cultural history of America’s literary golden age. Brooks’ masterwork would prove particularly influential in shaping how subsequent generations understood the transcendentalist movement and the intellectual currents that defined nineteenth-century New England. Together, these selections showed the National Book Award recognizing works that ranged from personal memoir to ambitious historical synthesis, both equally vital to the American literary conversation.

Below, you’ll find the complete list of the 1936 National Book Award winners and finalists, along with details about what made these selections resonate with the award’s judges during this formative moment in the prize’s history.

Nonfiction