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)
2008Your 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)