| | 1917 With Americans of Past and Present Days by His Excellency J.J. Jusserand, Ambassador of France to the United States (Scribner) |
| | 1918 A History of the Civil War, 1861-1865 by James Ford Rhodes (Macmillan) |
| | 1919 (No Award) |
| | 1920 The War with Mexico, 2 vols. by Justin H. Smith (Macmillan) |
| | 1921 The Victory at Sea by William Sowden Sims in collaboration with Burton J. Hendrick (Doubleday) |
| | 1922 The Founding of New England by James Truslow Adams (Little) |
| | 1923 The Supreme Court in United States History by Charles Warren (Little) |
| | 1924 The American Revolution -- A Constitutional Interpretation by Charles Howard McIlwain (Macmillan) |
| | 1925 History of the American Frontier by Frederic L. Paxson (Houghton) |
| | 1926 A History of the United States by Edward Channing (Macmillan) |
| | 1927 Pinckney's Treaty by Samuel Flagg Bemis (Johns Hopkins) |
| | 1928 Main Currents in American Thought, 2 vols. by Vernon Louis Parrington (Harcourt) |
| | 1929 The Organization and Administration of the Union Army, 1861-1865 by Fred Albert Shannon (A.H. Clark) |
| | 1930 The War of Independence by Claude H. Van Tyne (Houghton) |
| | 1931 The Coming of the War 1914 by Bernadotte E. Schmitt (Scribner) |
| | 1932 My Experiences in the World War by John J. Pershing (Stokes) |
| | 1933 The Significance of Sections in American History by Frederick J. Turner (Holt) |
| | 1934 The People's Choice by Herbert Agar (Houghton) |
| | 1935 The Colonial Period of American History by Charles McLean Andrews (Yale Univ. Press) |
| | 1936 A Constitutional History of the United States by Andrew C. McLaughlin (Appleton) |
| | 1937 The Flowering of New England 1815-1865 by Van Wyck Brooks (Dutton) |
| | 1938 The Road to Reunion, 1865-1900 by Paul Herman Buck (Little) |
| | 1939 A History of American Magazines by Frank Luther Mott (Harvard Univ. Press) |
| | 1940 Abraham Lincoln: The War Years by Carl Sandburg (Harcourt) |
| | 1941 The Atlantic Migration, 1607-1860 by Marcus Lee Hansen (Harvard Univ. Press) |
| | 1942 Reveille in Washington, 1860-1865 by Margaret Leech (Harper) |
| | 1943 Paul Revere and the World He Lived In by Esther Forbes (Houghton) |
| | 1944 The Growth of American Thought by Merle Curti (Harper) |
| | 1945 Unfinished Business by Stephen Bonsal (Doubleday) |
| | 1946 The Age of Jackson by Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. (Little) |
| | 1947 Scientists Against Time by James Phinney Baxter 3rd (Little) |
| | 1948 Across the Wide Missouri by Bernard Devoto (Houghton) |
| | 1949 The Disruption of American Democracy by Roy Franklin Nichols (Macmillan) |
| | 1950 Art and Life in America by Oliver W. Larkin (Rinehart) |
| | 1951 The Old Northwest, Pioneer Period 1815-1840 by R. Carlyle Buley (Towers, Inc.) |
| | 1952 The Uprooted by Oscar Handlin (Little) |
| | 1953 The Era of Good Feelings by George Dangerfield (Harcourt) |
| | 1954 A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton (Doubleday) |
| | 1955 Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History by Paul Horgan (Rinehart) |
| | 1956 The Age of Reform by Richard Hofstadter (Knopf) |
| | 1957 Russia Leaves the War: Soviet-American Relations, 1917-192O by George F. Kennan (Princeton Univ. Press) |
| | 1958 Banks and Politics in America by Bray Hammond (Princeton Univ. Press) |
| | 1959 The Republican Era: l869-1901 by Leonard D. White, with the assistance of Miss Jean Schneider (Macmillan) |
| | 1960 In the Days of McKinley by Margaret Leech (Harper) |
| | 1961 Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference by Herbert Feis (Princeton Univ. Press) |
| | 1962 The Triumphant Empire: Thunder-Clouds Gather in the West 1763-1766 by Lawrence H. Gipson (Knopf) |
| | 1963 Washington, Village and Capital, 1800-1878 by Constance McLaughlin Green (Princeton Univ. Press) |
| | 1964 Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town by Sumner Chilton Powell (Wesleyan Univ. Press) |
| | 1965 The Greenback Era by Irwin Unger (Princeton Univ. Press) |
| | 1966 The Life of the Mind in America by the late Perry Miller (Harcourt) |
| | 1967 Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West by William H. Goetzmann (Knopf) |
| | 1968 The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn (Harvard Univ. Press) |
| | 1969 Origins of the Fifth Amendment by Leonard W. Levy (Oxford Univ. Press) |
| | 1970 Present At The Creation: My Years In The State Department by Dean Acheson (Norton) |
| | 1971 Roosevelt: The Soldier Of Freedom by James MacGregor Burns (Harcourt) |
| | 1972 Neither Black Nor White by Carl N. Degler (Macmillan) |
| | 1973 People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization by Michael Kammen (Knopf) |
| | 1974 The Americans: The Democratic Experience by Daniel J. Boorstin (Random) |
| | 1975 Jefferson and His Time, Vols. I-V by Dumas Malone (Little) |
| | 1976 Lamy of Santa Fe by Paul Horgan (Farrar) |
| | 1977 The Impending Crisis, 1841-1867 by David M. Potter (Harper), a posthumous publication. Manuscript finished by Don E. Fehrenbacher |
| | 1978 The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (Harvard Univ. Press) |
| | 1979 The Dred Scott Case by Don E. Fehrenbacher (Oxford Univ. Press) |
| | 1980 Been in the Storm So Long by Leon F. Litwack (Knopf) |
| | 1981 American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876 by Lawrence A. Cremin (Harper & Row) |
| | 1982 Mary Chesnut's Civil War (Yale U. Press) by edited by C. Vann Woodward |
| | 1983 The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 by Rhys L. Isaac (U. North Carolina Press) |
| | 1984 (No Award) |
| | 1985 Prophets of Regulation by Thomas K. McCraw (Belknap/Harvard) |
| | 1986 ...the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age by Walter A. McDougall (Basic Books) |
| | 1987 Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution by Bernard Bailyn (Alfred A. Knopf) |
| | 1988 The Launching of Modern American Science 1846-1876 by Robert V. Bruce (Alfred A. Knopf) |
| | 1989 Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson (Oxford University Press) |
| | 1989 Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963 by Taylor Branch (Simon and Schuster) |
| | 1990 In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines by Stanley Karnow (Random House) |
| | 1991 A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (Alfred A. Knopf) |
| | 1992 The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties by Mark E. Neely, Jr. (Oxford University Press) |
| | 1993 The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood (Alfred A. Knopf) |
| | 1994 (No Award) |
| | 1995 No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Simon & Schuster) |
| | 1996 William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic by Alan Taylor (Alfred A. Knopf) |
| | 1997 Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution by Jack N. Rakove (Alfred A. Knopf) |
| | 1998 Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion by Edward J. Larson (BasicBooks) |
| | 1999 Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace (Oxford University Press) |
| | 2000 Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 by David M. Kennedy (Oxford University Press |
| | 2001 Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis (Alfred A. Knopf) |
| | 2002 The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) |
| | 2003 An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson (Henry Holt and Company) |
| | 2004 A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration by Steven Hahn (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) |
| | 2005 Washington’s Crossing by David Hackett Fischer (Oxford University Press) |
| | 2006 Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky (Oxford University Press) |