1980s
Finalists have been announced since 1980, and are shown as the indented entries.
- 1980: Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter
- The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar
- The Medusa and the Snail by Lewis Thomas
- 1981: Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture by Carl E. Schorske
- China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston
- Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War by William Manchester
- Southerners: A Journalist's Odyssey by Marshall Frady
- 1982: The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
- Basin and Range by John McPhee
- Mrs. Harris: The Death of the Scarsdale Diet Doctor by Diana Trilling
- 1983: Is There No Place on Earth for Me? by Susan Sheehan
- The Fate of the Earth by Jonathan Schell
- Terrorists and Novelists by Diane Johnson
- 1984: The Social Transformation of American Medicine by Paul Starr
- Conversations With the Enemy by Winston Groom and Duncan Spencer
- Endless Enemies by Jonathan Kwitny
- 1985: The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two by Studs Terkel
- Endless Enemies by Jonathan Kwitny
- Dawn to the West by Donald Keene
- 1986 (two winners): Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families by J. Anthony Lukas
- Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White by Joseph Lelyveld
- Habits and the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life by Robert Neelly Bellah
- 1987: Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land by David K. Shipler
- Rising from the Plains by John McPhee
- Rain or Shine: A Family Memoir by Cyra McFadden
- 1988: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
- Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick
- Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Society by Daniel Callahan
- 1989: A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan
- The Last Farmer by Howard Kohn
- Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris
Read more about this topic: Pulitzer Prize For General Non-Fiction