Der National Book Award (NBA) ist neben dem Pulitzer-Preis der renommierteste Literaturpreis der USA.
Er wird seit 1950 jährlich vergeben; zur Zeit in den vier Kategorien Roman, Lyrik, Kinderbuch und Sachbuch. Zuvor gab es eine Anzahl weiterer Kategorien, die aber nach und nach aufgegeben wurden. Seit 1989 wird der NBA von der eigens zu diesem Zweck gegründeten National Book Foundation verliehen. Für jede Kategorie gibt es eine fünfköpfige unabhängige Jury.
Der Preisträger muss amerikanischer Staatsbürger sein; sein Werk muss in englischer Sprache verfasst und in den USA verlegt sein. Der Preis ist mit 10.000 US-Dollar dotiert.
Preisträger
Kategorie Prosa (Fiction)
| 1950 | Nelson Algren | The Man With The Golden Arm |
| 1951 | William Faulkner | The Collected Stories of William Faulkner |
| 1952 | James Jones | From Here to Eternity |
| 1953 | Ralph Ellison | Invisible Man, dt. Der unsichtbare Mann |
| 1954 | Saul Bellow | The Adventures of Augie March |
| 1955 | William Faulkner | A Fable |
| 1956 | John O'Hara | Ten North Frederick |
| 1957 | Wright Morris | The Field of Vision |
| 1958 | John Cheever | The Wapshot Chronicle |
| 1959 | Bernard Malamud | The Magic Barre |
| 1960 | Philip Roth | Goodbye, Columbus |
| 1961 | Conrad Richter | The Waters of Kronos |
| 1962 | Walker Percy | The Moviegoer |
| 1963 | J. F. Powers | Morte D'Urban |
| 1964 | John Updike | The Centaur |
| 1965 | Saul Bellow | Herzog |
| 1966 | Katherine Anne Porter | The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter |
| 1967 | Bernard Malamud | The Fixer |
| 1968 | Thornton Wilder | The Eighth Day |
| 1969 | Jerzy Kosinski | Steps |
| 1970 | Joyce Carol Oates | Them |
| 1971 | Saul Bellow | Mr. Sammler's Planet |
| 1972 | Flannery O'Connor | The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor |
| 1973 | John Barth | Chimera |
| 1973 | John Williams | Augustus |
| 1974 | Thomas Pynchon | Gravity's Rainbow (letztlich nicht verliehen) |
| 1974 | Isaac Bashevis Singer | A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories |
| 1975 | Robert Stone | Dog Soldiers |
| 1975 | Thomas Williams | The Hair of Harold Roux |
| 1976 | William Gaddis | JR |
| 1977 | Wallace Stegner | The Spectator Bird |
| 1978 | Mary Lee Settle | Blood Ties |
| 1979 | Tim O'Brien | Going After Cacciato |
| 1980 Hardcover | William Styron | Sophie's Choice |
| 1980 Paperback | John Irving | The World According to Garp, dt. Garp – und wie er die Welt sah |
| 1981 Hardcover | Wright Morris | Plains Song |
| 1981 Paperback | John Cheever | The Stories of John Cheever |
| 1982 Hardcover | John Updike | Rabbit is Rich |
| 1982 Paperback | William Maxwell | So Long, See You Tomorrow |
| 1983 Hardcover | Alice Walker | The Color Purple |
| 1983 Paperback | Eudora Welty | Collected Stories of Eudora Welty |
| 1984 | Ellen Gilchrist | Victory Over Japan: A Book of Stories |
| 1985 | Don DeLillo | White Noise |
| 1986 | E. L. Doctorow | World's Fair |
| 1987 | Larry Heinemann | Paco's Story |
| 1988 | Pete Dexter | Paris Trout |
| 1989 | John Casey | Spartina |
| 1990 | Charles Johnson | Middle Passage |
| 1991 | Norman Rush | Mating |
| 1992 | Cormac McCarthy | All the Pretty Horses |
| 1993 | Annie Proulx | The Shipping News |
| 1994 | William Gaddis | A Frolic of His Own |
| 1995 | Philip Roth | Sabbath's Theater |
| 1996 | Andrea Barrett | Ship Fever and Other Stories |
| 1997 | Charles Frazier | Cold Mountain |
| 1998 | Alice McDermott | Charming Billy |
| 1999 | Ha Jin | Waiting |
| 2000 | Susan Sontag | In America |
| 2001 | Jonathan Franzen | The Corrections |
| 2002 | Julia Glass | Three Junes |
| 2003 | Shirley Hazzard | The Great Fire |
| 2004 | Lily Tuck | The News from Paraguay |
| 2005 | William T. Vollmann | Europe Central |
| 2006 | Richard Powers | The Echo Maker |
| 2007 | Denis Johnson | Tree of Smoke |
Kategorie Sachbuch (Nonfiction)
| 1950 | Ralph L. Rusk | Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| 1951 | Newton Arvin | Herman Melville |
| 1952 | Rachel Carson | The Sea Around Us |
| 1953 | Bernard A. De Voto | The Course of Empire |
| 1954 | Bruce Catton | A Stillness at Appomattox |
| 1955 | Joseph Wood Krutch | The Measure of Man |
| 1956 | Herbert Kubly | An American in Italy |
| 1957 | George F. Kennan | Russia Leaves the War |
| 1958 | Catherine Drinker Bowen | The Lion and the Throne |
| 1959 | J. Christopher Herold | Misterss to an Age: A Life of Madame De Stael |
| 1960 | Richard Ellmann | James Joyce |
| 1961 | William L. Shirer | The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, dt. Aufstieg und Fall des Dritten Reiches |
| 1962 | Lewis Mumford | The City in History: Its Origins, its Transformations and its Prospects |
| 1963 | Leon Edel | Henry James, Vol. II: The Conquest of London; Henry James, Vol. III: The Middle Years |
| 1964 | Aileen Ward | John Keats: The Making of a Poet |
| 1964 | William H. McNeill | The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community |
| 1964 | Christopher Tunnard & Boris Pushkarev | Man-made America |
| 1965 | Eleanor Clark | Oysters of Lockmariaquer |
| 1965 | Louis Fischer | The Life of Lenin |
| 1965 | Norbert Wiener | God and Golem, Inc: A Comment on Certain Points where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion |
| 1966 | Janet Flanner | Paris Journal, 1944-1965 |
| 1966 | Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr | A Thousand Days |
| 1967 | Justin Kaplan | Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography |
| 1967 | Peter Gay | The Enlightenment, Vol. I: An Interpretation the Rise of Modern Paganism |
| 1967 | Oscar Lewis | La Vida |
| 1968 | William Troy | Selected Essays |
| 1968 | George F. Kennan | Memoirs: 1925-1950 |
| 1968 | Jonathan Kozol | Death at an Early Age |
| 1969 | Norman Mailer | The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, The Novel as History |
| 1969 | Winthrop D. Jordan | White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 |
| 1969 | Robert J. Lifton | Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima |
| … | … | … |
| 1980 Hardcover | Tom Wolfe | The Right Stuff |
| 1980 Paperback | Peter Matthiessen | The Snow Leopard |
| 1981 Hardcover | Maxine Hong Kingston | China Men |
| 1981 Paperback | Jane Kramer | The Last Cowboy |
| 1982 Hardcover | Tracy Kidder | The Soul of a New Machine |
| 1982 Paperback | Victor S. Navasky | Naming Names |
| 1983 Hardcover | Fox Butterfield | China: Alive in the Bitter Sea |
| 1983 Paperback | James Fallows | National Defense |
| 1984 | Robert V. Remini | Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845 |
| 1985 | J. Anthony Lukas | Common Ground: A Turbulate Decade in the Lives of Three American Families |
| 1986 | Barry Lopez | Arctic Dreams |
| 1987 | Richard Rhodes | The Making of the Atom Bomb |
| 1988 | Neil Sheehan | A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam |
| 1989 | Thomas L. Friedman | From Beirut to Jerusalem |
| 1990 | Ron Chernow | The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance |
| 1991 | Orlando Patterson | Freedom |
| 1992 | Paul Monette | Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story |
| 1993 | Gore Vidal | United States: Essays 1952-1992 |
| 1994 | Sherwin B. Nuland | How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter |
| 1995 | Tina Rosenberg | The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism |
| 1996 | James Carroll | An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War that Came Between Us |
| 1997 | Joseph J. Ellis | American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson |
| 1998 | Edward Ball | Slaves in the Family |
| 1999 | John W. Dower | Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II |
| 2000 | Nathaniel Philbrick | In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Waleship Essex |
| 2001 | Andrew Solomon | The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression |
| 2002 | Robert A. Caro | Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson |
| 2003 | Carlos Eire | Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy |
| 2004 | Kevin Boyle | Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age |
| 2005 | Joan Didion | The Year of Magical Thinking |
| 2006 | Timothy Egan | The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl |
| 2007 | Tim Weiner | Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA |
Kategorie Lyrik (Poetry)
| 1950 | William Carlos Williams | Paterson: Book III and Selected Poems |
| 1951 | Wallace Stevens | The Auroras of Autumn |
| 1952 | Marianne Moore | Collected Poems |
| 1953 | Archibald MacLeish | Collected Poems, 1917-1952 |
| 1954 | Conrad Aiken | Collected Poems |
| 1955 | Wallace Stevens | The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens |
| 1956 | W. H. Auden | The Shield of Achilles |
| 1957 | Richard Wilbur | Things of the World |
| 1958 | Robert Penn Warren | Promises: Poems, 1954-1956 |
| 1959 | Theodore Roethke | Words for the Wind |
| 1960 | Robert Lowell | Life Studies |
| 1961 | Randall Jarrell | The Woman at the Washington Zoo |
| 1962 | Alan Dugan | Poems |
| 1963 | William Stafford | Traveling Through the Dark |
| 1964 | John Crowe Ransom | Selected Poems |
| 1965 | Theodore Roethke | The Far Field |
| 1966 | James Dickey | Buckdancer's Choice: Poems |
| 1967 | James Merrill | Nights and Days |
| 1968 | Robert Bly | The Light Around the Body |
| 1969 | John Berryman | His Toy, His Dream, His Rest |
| 1970 | Elizabeth Bishop | The Complete Poems |
| 1971 | Mona Van Duyn | To See, To Take |
| 1972 | Howard Moss | Selected Poems |
| 1972 | Frank O'Hara | The Collected Works of Frank O'Hara |
| 1973 | A. R. Ammons | Collected Poems, 1951-1971 |
| 1974 | Allen Ginsberg | The Fall of America: Poems of these States, 1965-1971 |
| 1974 | Adrienne Rich | Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972 |
| 1975 | Marilyn Hacker | Presentation Piece |
| 1976 | John Ashbery | Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror |
| 1977 | Richard Eberhart | Collected Poems, 1930-1976 |
| 1978 | Howard Nemerov | The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov |
| 1979 | James Merrill | Mirabell: Book of Numbers |
| 1980 | Philip Levine | Ashes |
| 1981 | Lisel Mueller | The Need to Hold Still |
| 1982 | William Bronk | Life Supports: New and Collected Poems |
| 1983 | Galway Kinnell | Selected Poems |
| 1983 | Charles Wright | Country Music: Selected Early Poems |
| 1991 | Philip Levine | What Work Is |
| 1992 | Mary Oliver | New & Selected Poems |
| 1993 | A. R. Ammons | Garbage |
| 1994 | James Tate | A Worshipful Company of Fletchers |
| 1995 | Stanley Kunitz | Passing Through: The Later Poems |
| 1996 | Hayden Carruth | Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey |
| 1997 | William Meredith | Effort at Speech: New & Selected Poems |
| 1998 | Gerald Stern | This Time: New and Selected Poems |
| 1999 | Ai | Vice: New & Selected Poems |
| 2000 | Lucille Clifton | Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry |
| 2001 | Alan Dugan | Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000 |
| 2002 | Ruth Stone | In the Next Galaxy |
| 2003 | C.K. Williams | The Singing |
| 2004 | Jean Valentine | Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003 |
| 2005 | W. S. Merwin | Migration |
| 2006 | Nathaniel Mackey | Splay Anthem |
| 2007 | Robert Hass | Time and Materials: Poems, 1997-2005 |
Kategorie Jugendbuch (Young People's Literature)
| 1996 | Victor Martinez | Parrott In the Oven: MiVida |
| 1997 | Han Nolan | Dancing on the Edge |
| 1998 | Louis Sachar | Holes, dt. Löcher |
| 1999 | Kimberly Willis Holt | When Zachary Beaver Came to Town |
| 2000 | Gloria Whelan | Homeless Bird |
| 2001 | Virginia Euwer Wolff | True Believer |
| 2002 | Nancy Farmer | The House of the Scorpion |
| 2003 | Polly Horvath | The Canning Season |
| 2004 | Pete Hautman | Godless |
| 2005 | Jeanne Birdsall | The Penderwicks |
| 2006 | M.T. Anderson | The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party |
| 2007 | Sherman Alexie | The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian |
Kategorie Kinderbuch
| 1969 | Meindert DeJong | Journey from Peppermint Street |
| 1970 | Isaac Bashevis Singer | A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing up in Warsaw |
| 1971 | Lloyd Alexander | The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian |
| 1972 | Donald Barthelme | The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine or The Hithering Thithering Djinn |
| 1973 | Ursula K. Le Guin | The Farthest Shore |
| 1974 | Eleanor Cameron | The Court of the Stone Children |
| 1975 | Virginia Hamilton | M. C. Higgins the Great |
| 1976 | Walter D. Edmonds | Bert Breen's Barn |
| 1977 | Katherine Paterson | The Master Puppeteer |
| 1978 | Judith & Herbert Kohl | The View From the Oak |
| 1979 | Katherine Paterson | The Great Gilly Hopkins |
| 1980 Hardcover | Joan W. Blos | A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal |
| 1980 Paperback | Madeleine L'Engle | A Swiftly Tilting Planet |
| 1981 Hardcover | Betsy Byars | The Night Swimmers |
| 1981 Paperback | Beverly Cleary | Ramona and Her Mother |
| 1982 Hardcover | Lloyd Alexander | Westmark |
| 1982 Paperback | Ouida Sebestyen | Words by Heart |
| 1983 Hardcover | Jean Fritz | Homesick: My Own Story |
| 1983 Paperback | Paula Fox | A Place Apart |
| 1983 Paperback | Joyce Carol Thomas | Marked by Fire |
Kategorie Bilderbuch
| 1982 Hardcover | Maurice Sendak | Outside Over There |
| 1982 Paperback | Peter Spier | Noah's Ark |
| 1983 Hardcover | Barbara Cooney | Miss Rumphius |
| 1983 Hardcover | William Steig | Doctor De Soto |
| 1983 Paperback | Mary Ann Hoberman & Betty Fraser (ill.) | A House is a House for Me |