The Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction has been awarded since 1962 for a distinguished book of non-fiction by an American author that is not eligible for consideration in any other category.

• 1962: The Making of the President 1960 by Theodore H. White
• 1963: The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman
• 1964: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter
• 1965: O Strange New World by Howard Mumford Jones
• 1966: Wandering Through Winter by Edwin Way Teale
• 1967: The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture by David Brion Davis
• 1968: Rousseau And Revolution, The Tenth And Concluding Volume Of The Story Of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant.
• 1969: The Armies Of The Night by Norman Mailer
• 1969: So Human An Animal by Rene Jules Dubos
• 1970: Gandhi's Truth by Erik H. Erikson
• 1971: The Rising Sun by John Toland
• 1972: Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 by Barbara W. Tuchman
• 1973: Children of Crisis, Vols. II and III by Robert Coles
• 1973: Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam by Frances Fitzgerald
• 1974: The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
• 1975: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
• 1976: Why Survive? Being Old In America by Robert N. Butler
• 1977: Beautiful Swimmers by William W. Warner
• 1978: The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan
• 1979: On Human Nature by Edward O. Wilson
• 1980: Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
• 1981: Fin-De Siecle Vienna: Politics And Culture by Carl E. Schorske
• 1982: The Soul of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder
• 1983: Is There No Place On Earth For Me? by Susan Sheehan
• 1984: The Social Transformation Of American Medicine by Paul Starr
• 1985: The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two by Studs Terkel
• 1986: Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White by Joseph Lelyveld
• 1986: Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families by J. Anthony Lukas
• 1987: Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land by David K. Shipler
• 1988: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
• 1989: A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan
• 1990: And Their Children After Them by Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson
• 1991: The Ants by Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson
• 1992: The Prize: The Epic Quest For Oil, Money & Power by Daniel Yergin
• 1993: Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America by Garry Wills
• 1994: Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days Of The Soviet Empire by David Remnick
• 1995: The Beak Of The Finch: A Story Of Evolution In Our Time by Jonathan Weiner
• 1996: The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism by Tina Rosenberg
• 1997: Ashes To Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, The Public Health, And The Unabashed Triumph Of Philip Morris by Richard Kluger
• 1998: Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
• 1999: Annals of the Former World by John McPhee
• 2000: Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower
• 2001: Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix
• 2002: Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution by Diane McWhorter
• 2003: A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power
• 2004: Gulag: A History (ISBN 0767900561) by Anne Applebaum