The Harry S. Truman Book Award is presented biennially by the Truman Library Institute. Established in 1963, the Harry S. Truman Book Award recognizes the best book published within a two-year period dealing primarily and substantially with some aspect of the history of the United States between April 12, 1945 and January 20, 1953, or with the life or career of Harry S. Truman.
2024 The Watchdog: How the Truman Committee Battled Corruption and Helped Win World War Two by Steve Drummond
2022 Between Containment and Rollback: The United States and the Cold War in Germany by Christian F. Ostermann
2020 Grand Improvisation: America Confronts the British Superpower, 1945-1957 by Derek Leebaert
2018 A Force So Swift: Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949 by Kevin Peraino
2016 Potsdam: The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe by Michael Neiberg
2014 Henry Wallace’s 1948 Presidential Campaign and the Future of Postwar Liberalism by Thomas W. Devine
2012 The War for Korea, 1950-1951: They Came from the North by Allan R. Millett
2010 Selling the Korean War: Propaganda, Politics, and Public Opinion in the United States, 1950-1953 by Steven Casey
2008 From Roosevelt to Truman: Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War by Wilson D. Miscamble
2006 The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis
2004 Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations by Stephen C. Schlesinger
2002 The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968 by Kari Frederickson
2000 Downfall: The End of the Japanese Empire by Richard B. Frank
1998 (No award given)
1996 Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman by Alonzo Hamby
1994 George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947-1950 by Wilson D. Miscamble
1992 Ridgway Duels for Korea by Roy E. Appleman and America’s Germany: John J. McCloy an the Federal Republic of Germany by Thomas Alan Schartz
1990 Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Year by McGeorge Bundy
1988 The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas
1986 The Years of MacArthur: Triumph and Disaster, 1945-1964, Vol. III by Dorris Clayton James
1984 The Past Has Another Pattern: Memoirs by George W. Ball
1982 The Origins of the Korean War by Bruce Cumings and Ambiguous Partnership: Britain and America, 1944-1947 by Robert M. Hathaway
1980 The Japanese Thread: A Life in the U.S. Foreign Service by John K. Emerson
1978 Dean Acheson: The State Department Years by David McClellan
1976 The Cold War Begins: Soviet-American Conflict Over Eastern Europe by Lynn Etheridge Davis
1974 Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism by Alonzo Hamby
1972 Truman and the 80th Congress by Susan M. Hartmann
1970 Present at the Creation: My Years at the State Department by Dean G. Acheson and Atomic Shield, 1947-1952: A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Volume II by Richard G. Hewlett and Francis Duncan
1969 The Loneliest Campaign: The Truman Victory of 1948 by Irwin Ross
1967 The Communist Controversy in Washington: From the New Deal to McCarthy by Earl Latham
