| 2023 |
Jefferson Cowie |
| 2022 |
Ada Ferrer
Nicole Eustace |
| 2020 |
W. Caleb McDaniel |
| 2019 |
David W. Blight — Frederick Douglass |
| 2018 |
Jack E. Davis — The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea |
| 2017 |
Heather Ann Thompson — Blood in the Water (book) |
| 2016 |
T. J. Stiles |
| 2015 |
Elizabeth A. Fenn — Encounters at the Heart of the World |
| 2014 |
Alan Taylor |
| 2013 |
Fredrik Logevall |
| 2012 |
Manning Marable — Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention |
| 2011 |
Eric Foner |
| 2010 |
Liaquat Ahamed |
| 2009 |
Annette Gordon-Reed |
| 2008 |
Daniel Walker Howe |
| 2007 |
Gene Roberts
Hank Klibanoff |
| 2006 |
David Oshinsky — Polio: An American Story |
| 2005 |
David Hackett Fischer |
| 2004 |
Steven Hahn — A Nation under Our Feet |
| 2003 |
Rick Atkinson — An Army at Dawn |
| 2002 |
Louis Menand |
| 2001 |
Joseph Ellis |
| 2000 |
David M. Kennedy — Freedom From Fear |
| 1999 |
Edwin G. Burrows
Mike Wallace |
| 1998 |
Edward J. Larson |
| 1997 |
Jack N. Rakove |
| 1996 |
Alan Taylor — William Cooper's Town |
| 1995 |
Doris Kearns Goodwin — No Ordinary Time |
| 1993 |
Gordon S. Wood — The Radicalism of the American Revolution |
| 1992 |
Mark E. Neely, Jr. |
| 1991 |
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich |
| 1990 |
Stanley Karnow |
| 1989 |
James M. McPherson — Battle Cry of Freedom
Taylor Branch |
| 1988 |
Robert V. Bruce — The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876 |
| 1987 |
Bernard Bailyn — Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution |
| 1986 |
Walter A. McDougall |
| 1985 |
Thomas K. McCraw |
| 1983 |
Rhys Isaac |
| 1982 |
C. Vann Woodward — Mary Chesnut's Civil War |
| 1981 |
Lawrence A. Cremin — American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876 |
| 1980 |
Leon Litwack |