- 1921
- Novel
- The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton (Appleton)
- 1926
- Novel
- Arrowsmith, by Sinclair Lewis (Harcourt)
- 1928
- Novel
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey, by Thornton Wilder (Boni)
- Drama
- Strange Interlude, by Eugene O'Neill
- 1937
- Novel
- Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell (Macmillan)
- 1940
- Novel
- The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck (Viking)
- 1943
- Novel
- Dragon's Teeth, by Upton Sinclair (Viking)
- 1947
- Novel
- All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren (Harcourt)
- 1948
- Drama
- A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams
- 1953
- Fiction
- The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway (Scribner)
- 1957
- Biography
- Profiles in Courage, by John F. Kennedy (Harper)
- 1961
- Fiction
- To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (Lippincott)
- 1967
- Fiction
- The Fixer, by Bernard Malamud (Farrar)
- 1976
- Fiction
- Humboldt's Gift, by Saul Bellow (Viking)
- 1982
- Fiction
- Rabbit Is Rich, by John Updike (Knopf)
- 1983
- Fiction
- The Color Purple, by Alice Walker (Harcourt Brace)
- 1988
- Fiction
- Beloved, by Toni Morrison (Alfred A. Knopf)
- Drama
- Driving Miss Daisy, by Alfred Uhry
- 1989
- Fiction
- Breathing Lessons, by Anne Tyler (Alfred A. Knopf)
- 1991
- Fiction
- Rabbit At Rest, by John Updike (Alfred A. Knopf)
- 1998
- Fiction
- American Pastoral, by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin)
- General Nonfiction
- Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond (W.W. Norton)
- 2000
- Fiction
- Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri (Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin)
- 2003
- Fiction
- Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar)
he Transmigration of Souls, by John Adams (Boosey & Hawkes)
- 2004
- Fiction
- The Known World, by Edward P. Jones (Amistad/ HarperCollins)
- 2006
- Fiction
- March, by Geraldine Brooks (Viking)
- 2007
- Fiction
- The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (Alfred A. Knopf)
- 2008
- Fiction
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz (Riverhead Books)
- 2009
- Fiction
- Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout (Random House)
- 2010
- Fiction
- Tinkers, by Paul Harding (Bellevue Literary Press)
- 2011
- Fiction
- A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan (Alfred A.. Knopf)
- 2012
- Drama
- Water by the Spoonful, by Quiara Alegría Hudes
- History
- Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, by Manning Marable (Viking)
- The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt (W.W. Norton & Company)
- 2015
- Fiction
- All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr (Scribner)
- Biography
- The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe, by David I. Kertzer (Random House)
- General Nonfiction
- The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, by Elizabeth Kolbert (Henry Holt)
Fields, by Julia Wolfe (Red Poppy Music/G. Schirmer, Inc.)
- 2016
- Fiction
- The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press)
- Biography
- Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, by William Finnegan (Penguin Press)
- 2017
- Fiction
- The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)
- 2018
- Fiction
- Less, by Andrew Sean Greer (Lee Boudreaux Books/Little, Brown and Company)
- 2020
- Fiction
- The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)