2021: The Sirenes of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World by Sarah Stewart Johnson (Crown)
2020: Archaeology From Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past by Sarah Parck (Henry Holt and Co.)
2019: Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth by Adam Frank (W.W. Norton & Co.)
2018: Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky (Penguin Press)
2017: The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Scribner)
2016: The Triumph of Seeds: How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses, & Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History by Thor Hanson (Basic Books)
2015: Animal Weapons: The Evolution of Battle by Douglas J. Emlen (Henry Holt & Co.)
2014: Einstein and the Quantum: The Quest of the Valiant Swabian by A. Douglas Stone (Princeton University Press)
2013: The Signal and The Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail - But Some Don't by Nate Silver (The Penguin Press)
2012: The Fate of Greenland: Lessons from Abrupt Climate Change by Philip Conkling, Richard Alley, Wallace Broecker and George Denton (The MIT Press)
2011: Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Climate Change and Energy in the 21st by Burton Ritcher (Cambridge University Press)
2010: Complexity: A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell (Oxford University Press)
2009: The Art and Politics of Science by Harold Varmus (W.W. Norton and Company)
2008: Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin (Pantheon Books)
2007: The Making of the Fittest by Sean B. Carroll (W.W. Norton and Company)
2006: Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Control of Climate by William F. Ruddiman (Princeton University Press)
2005: The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey: Unearthing the Origins Monkeys, Apes and Humans by Chris Beard (University of California Press)
2004: Issac Newton by James Gleick (Pantheon Books)
2003: Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth by Andrew H. Knoll (Princeton University Press)
2002: A Brain for All Seasons: Human Evolution & Abrupt Climate Change by William H. Calvin (The University of Chicago Press)
2001: The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future by Richard B. Alley (Princeton University Press)
2000: Cradle of Life: The Discovery of the Earth's Earliest Fossils by J. William Schopf (Princeton University Press)
1999: The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene (W. W. Norton & Company)
1998: Taking Wing: Archaeopteryx & The Evolution of Bird Flight by Pat Shipman (Simon & Schuester)
1997: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (Norton)
1996: Where Does the Weirdness Go? Why Quantum Mechanics Is Strange, But Not as Strange as You Think, and Steel by David Lindley (Basic Books)
1995: Journey to the Ants: A Story of Scientific Exploration by Edward O. Wilson and Bert Holldobler (Harvard University Press)
1994: Black Holes & Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy by Kip S.Thorne (Norton)
1993: Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos by Garrett Hardin (Oxford University Press)
1992: One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought by Ernst Mayr (Harvard University Press)
1991: Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte (Graphics Press)
1990: Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History by Stephen Jay Gould (Norton)
1989: The How And The Why: An Essay on the Origins and Development of Physical Theory by David Park (Princeton University Press)
1988: Infinite in All Directions by Freeman Dyson (Harper & Row)
1987: Chemicals and Society: A Guide to the New Chemical Age by Hugh D. Crone (Cambridge University Press)
1986: The Mystery of Comets by Fred L. Whipple (Smithsonian Institution Press)
1985: The Scientific Reinterpretation of Form by Norma E. Emerton (Cornell University Press)
1984: Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black Holes and the Fate of Stars by George Greenstein (Freundlich Books)
1983: Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould (Norton)
1982: Emerging Cosmology by Sir Bernard Lovell (Columbia University Press)
1981: Cosmic Dawn: The Origins of Matter and Life by Eric Chaisson (Atlantic-Little, Brown)
1980: The Image of Eternity: Roots of Time in the Physical World by David A. Park (University of Massachusetts Press)
1979: Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery by John Imbrie and Katherine Palmer Imbrie (Enslow Publishers)
1978: Mechanics of the Mind by Colin Blakemore (Cambridge University Press)
1977: The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space by Gerard K. O’Neill (William Morrow)
1976: Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay by William W. Warner (Atlantic-Little, Brown)
1975: The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World by Guido Majno (Harvard University Press)
1974: Darwin on Man by Howard E. Gruber and Paul H. Barrett (Harvard University Press)
1973: The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann by Herman H. Goldstine (Princeton University Press)
1972: The Closing Circle: Nature, Man and Technology by Barry Commoner (Knopf)
1971: Vitamin C and the Common Cold by Linus Pauling (W. H. Freeman)
1970: The Life and Death of a Salt Marsh by John and Mildred Teal (Atlantic-Little, Brown)
1969: Antibodies and Immunity by G. J. V. Nossal (Basic Books)
1968: Great Waters by Sir Alister Hardy (Harper & Row)
1967: Modern Genetics by Haig P. Papazian (W. W. Norton)
1966: Man Adapting by Rene Dubos (Yale University Press)
1965: Bird Migration by Donald R. Griffin (Anchor Science Study Series)
1964: The Origin of Adaptations by Verne Grant (Columbia University Press)
1963: The Unseen World by Rene Dubos (The Rockefeller Institute Press association with the Oxford University Press)
1962: The World of Ice by James L. Dyson (Knopf)
1961: Communication Among Social Bees by Martin Lindauer (Harvard University Press)