1998
	Fiction: The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro--Winner! Birds of America by Lorrie Moore Preston Falls by David Gates No Lease On Life by Lynne Tillman The Hours by Michael Cunningham
	General Nonfiction: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch--Winner! The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild The Greatest Benefit to Mankind by Roy Porter Many Thousands Gone by Ira Berlin
	Biography and Autobiography: A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar--Winner! Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow King of the World by David Remnick Everybody Was So Young by Amanda Vaill Rocket Boys by Homer H. Hickam
	Poetry: The Bird Catcher by Marie Ponsot--Winner! Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson Self-Evidence by Pamela White Hadas Thieves of Paradise by Yusef Komunyakaa Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler by Thylias Moss
	Criticism: Visions of Jazz by Gary Giddins--Winner! Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom The Sounds of Poetry by Robert Pinsky Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer Hip Hop America by Nelson George
1997
	Fiction: The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald--Winner! Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier Underworld by Don DeLillo American Pastoral by Philip Roth Dreams of My Russian Summers by Andrei Makine
	General Nonfiction: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman--Winner! Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer The Bible As It Was by James L. Kugel American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence by Pauline Maier How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker
	Biography and Autobiography: Ernie Pyle's War by James E. Tobin--Winner! Walking in the Shade by Doris Lessing Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life by J. M. Coetzee Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph J. Ellis
	Poetry: Black Zodiac by Charles Wright--Winner! Loose Sugar by Brenda Hillman Questions for Ecclesiastes by Mark Jarman Does Your House Have Lions? by Sonia Sanchez Desire by Frank Bidart
	Criticism: Making Waves by Mario Vargas Llosa--Winner! God and the American Writer by Alfred Kazin The End of the Novel of Love by Vivian Gornick The Pleasures of the Imagination by John Brewer The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets by Helen Vendler
	Ivan Sandrof Award, Contribution to American Arts & Letters: Leslie Fiedler
	Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing: Thomas Mallon
1996
	Fiction: Women in their Beds by Gina Berriault--Winner! About Schmidt by Louis Begley Dancing After Hours by Andre Dubus The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid From Bondage by Henry Roth
	General Nonfiction: Bad Land by Jonathan Raban--Winner! The Great Books by David Denby Hitler's Willing Executioners by Daniel Goldhagen Ashes to Ashes by Richard Kluger The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years by Bernard Lewis
	Biography and Autobiography: Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt--Winner! Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography by Peter Conn Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn by David Hajdu The Last Happy Occasion by Alan Shapiro Charles Ives: A Life with Music by Jan Swafford
	Poetry: Sun Under Wood by Robert Hass--Winner! Loosestrife by Stephen Dunn Imagine the Angels of Bread by Martin Espada Music Minus One by Jane Shore The Vigil by C. K. Williams
	Criticism: Finding a Form by William Gass--Winner! Art for Art's Sake & Literary Life by Gene H. Bell-Villada The True Story of the Novel by Margaret Anne Doody The Love Affair as a Work of Art by Dan Hofstadter Fame & Folly by Cynthia Ozick
	Ivan Sandrof Award, Contribution to American Arts & Letters: Albert Murray
	Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing: Dennis Drabelle
1995
	Fiction: Mrs. Ted Bliss by Stanley Elkin--Winner! Moo by Jane Smiley Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers Independence Day by Richard Ford The Tent of Orange Mist by Paul West
	General Nonfiction: A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books by Nicholas Basbanes In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle by Madeleine Blais All God's Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence by Fox Butterfield Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder by Lawrence Weschler
	Biography and Autobiography: Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson by Robert Polito--Winner!
	Poetry: Time & Money: New Poems by William Matthews--Winner!
	Criticism: The Forbidden Best-sellers of Pre-revolutionary France by Robert Darnton--Winner!