2002
(Press Release)
AMERICAN STUDIES: Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climatic Battle of Civil Rights Revolution, Diane McWhorter (Simon & Schuster)
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: John Adams, David McCullough (Simon & Schuster)
DRUE HEINZ AWARD FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT: Hortsense Callisher
FICTION: Empire Falls, Richard Russo (Knopf)
POETRY: The Darkness and the Light, Anthony Hecht (Knopf)

2001
AMERICAN STUDIES: In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Warship Essex, Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking)
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst, David Nasaw (Houghton Mifflin)
DRUE HEINZ AWARD FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT: Arthur Schlesinger
FICTION: Angel on the Roof: The Stories of Russell Banks, Russell Banks (HarperCollins)
POETRY: American Poerty: The Twentieth Century, 2 vols., Hass, Hollander, Kizer, Mackey, Perloff, eds (Library of America)

2000
AMERICAN STUDIES: Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, David M. Kennedy (Oxford University Press)
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Morgan: American Financier, Jean Strouse (Random)
FICTION: Close Range: Wyoming Stories, Annie Proulx (Scribner)
POETRY: Vita Nova, Louise Glück (Harper Collins)
THE DRUE HEINZ AWARD FOR LITERARY ACHIEVEMENT: The Best Short Stories of the Twentieth Century, John Updike ()

1999
AMERICAN STUDIES: Slaves in the Family, Edward Ball (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: N.C. Wyeth, David Michaels (Knopf)
FICTION: I Married A Communist, Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin)
POETRY: The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren, John Burt (Louisiana Sate University)

1998
AMERICAN STUDIES: American Visions, Robert Hughes (Knopf)
AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Burning the Days: Recollection, James Salter (Random House)
BIOGRAPHY: American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, Joseph E. Ellis (Knopf)
FICTION: Underworld, Don DeLillio (Scribner)
POETRY: Black Zodiac, Charles Wright (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
SPECIAL PRIZE: God and the American Writer, Alfred Kazin (Knopf)

1997
AMERICAN STUDIES: Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West, Stephen E. Ambrose (Simon & Schuster)
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Taking on the World: Joseph and Stewart Alsop- Guardians of the American Century, Robert W. Merry (Viking)
FICTION: In the Beauty of the Lilies, John Updike (Knopf)
POETRY: The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems, 1966 - 1996, Robert Pinsky (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

1996
AMERICAN STUDIES: Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs and Declarations of Independence, John Hockenberry (Hyperion)
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography, David S. Reynolds (Knopf)
FICTION: All the Days and Nights, William Maxwell (Knopf)
POETRY: Atlantis, Mark Doty (HarperCollins)
SPECIAL AWARD: The Liar's Club, Mary Carr (Viking)

1995
AMERICAN STUDIES: Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South, John Egerton (Knopf)
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: No Ordinary Time Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, Doris Kearns Goodwin (Simon Schuster)
FICTION: The Collected Stories, Grace Paley (Farrar, Straus Giroux)
POETRY: Like Most Revelations, Richard Howard (Pantheon Books)

1994
AMERICAN STUDIES: Around the Cragged Hill A Personal and Political Philosophy, George F. Kennan (W.W. Norton)
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: W.E.B. Du Bois Biography of Race 1868-1919, David Levering Lewis (Henry Holt)
FICTION: The Oracle at Stoneleigh Court, Peter Taylor (Alfred A. Knopf)
POETRY: Tesserae & Other Poems, John Hollander (Alfred A. Knopf)

1993
AMERICAN ARTS & LETTERS: Up in the Old Hotel, Joseph Mitchell (Pantheon Books)
AMERICAN STUDIES: Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Worlds That Remade America, Gary Wills (Simon & Schuster)
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Archibald MacLeish: An American Life, Scott Donaldson (Houghton Mifflin)
FICTION: Outerbridge Reach, Robert Stone (Ticknor & Fields)

1992
AMERICAN ARTS & LETTERS: The Journals of John Cheever, John Cheever (Knopf)
AMERICAN STUDIES: The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev : 1960 - 1963, Michael S. Beschloss (HarperCollins)
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Woodrow Wilson, August Hecscher (Scribner)
FICTION: A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (Knopf)
SPECIAL PRIZE: American Views: Essays on American Art, John Wilmerding

1991
AMERICAN ARTS & LETTERS: The House of Barrymore, Margot Peters (Random House)
AMERICAN STUDIES: A New York Life, Brendan Gill (Poseidon Press)
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: The House of Morgan, Ron Chernow (Atlantic Monthly Press)
FICTION: Killing Mr. Watson, Peter Matthiessen (Random House)

1990
AMERICAN ARTS & LETTERS: The Writing Life, Annie Dillard (Harper & Row)
AMERICAN STUDIES: Among Schoolchildren, Tracy Kidder (Houghton Mifflin)
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: This Boy's Life: A Memoir, Tobias Wolff (Atlantic Monthly Press)
FICTION: Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, Allan Gurganus (Knopf)

1989
AMERICAN ARTS & LETTERS: At Home: Essays 1982-1988, Gore Vidal
AMERICAN STUDIES: A Bright Shining Lie John Paul Vann in Vietnam, Neil Sheehan (Vintage)
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963, Taylor Branch (Simon & Schuster)
FICTION: When I'm Calling From: New & Selected Stories, Raymond Carver (Atlantic Monthly Press)

1988
AMERICAN ARTS & LETTERS: Collected Prose, Robert Lowell (Farrar Straus & Giroux)
AMERICAN STUDIES: Miami, Joan Didion (Simon & Schuster)
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Many Masks: A Life of Frank Lloyd Wright, Brendan Gill (Putnam)
FICTION: The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (Farrar Straus & Giroux)
SPECIAL CITATION: Blues, John Hennesy (Knopf)

1987
AMERICAN STUDIES: Cities on a Hill: A Journey Through Contemporary American Cultures, Frances Fitzgerald (Simon & Schuster)
AMERICAN STUDIES: The Cycles of American History, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr (Houghton Mifflin)
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: The Life of Langston Hughes, Volume I: 1902-1941: I, Too, Sing America, Arnold Rampersad (Oxford University Press)
FICTION: Roger's Vision, John Updike (Knopf)
HONORABLE MENTION: 1986 Volumes of the Library of America
SPECIAL CITATION: The Story of English, Robert McCrum, William Cran and Robert MacNeil (Viking)

1986
FICTION: Lake Wobegon Days, Garrison Keillor (Viking)
FICTION: The Accidental Tourist, Anne Tyler (Knopf)
HONORABLE MENTION: 1985 Volumes of the Library of America