To see all past Pulitzer winners, visit the Awards section of the NYPL BiblioCommons catalog.

Fiction

Winner: None.

• Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
• Swamplandia! by Karen Russell ("'It Was a Very Good Year': One Librarian's Fiction Recommendations for 2011", video of Karen Russell at NYPL with Wells Tower)
• The Pale King by David Foster Wallace ("This is Water.")

General Nonfiction

Winner: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

• One Hundred Names For Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing by Diane Ackerman
• Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men by Mara Hvistendahl

Biography

Winner: George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis (Surprise, Security, and the American Experience)

• Love and Capital: Karl and Jennie Marx and the Birth of a Revolution by Mary Gabriel ("WOW @ The Library in Celebration of Women’s History Month")
• Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable (panel at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)

History

Winner: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable (panel at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)

• Empires, Nations & Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860 by Anne F. Hyde
• The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan
• Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America by Richard White

Drama

Winner: Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegría Hudes

• Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz
• Sons of the Prophet by Stephen Karam

Poetry

Winner: Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith

• Core Samples from the World by Forrest Gander
• How Long by Ron Padgett