| Winner | The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven | Charles Rosen |
| Winner | Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship, Based on Eleanor Roosevelt's Private Papers | Joseph P. Lash |
| Winner | The Organized War, 1863–1864 | Allan Nevins |
| Winner | Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America | Martin E. Marty |
| Winner | The Blue Whale | George L. Small |
| Winner | The Last Whole Earth Catalogue | Stewart Brand |
| Ballet Chronicle | B. H. Haggin |
| Harlem Renaissance | Nathan Huggins |
| Images and Shadows | Iris Origo |
| Movies into Films: Film Criticism, 1967–1970 | John Simon |
| Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 | Barbara Tuchman |
| After Great Pain: The Inner Life of Emily Dickinson | John Cody |
| Charles Demuth: Behind A Laughing Mask | Emily Farnham |
| Benjamin Rush: Revolutionary Gadfly | David Freeman Hawke |
| James Madison: A Biography | Ralph Ketcham |
| Inside, Looking Out: A Personal Memoir | Harding Lemay |
| Indian Man: A Life of Oliver La Farge | D'Arcy McNickle |
| Hogarth: His Life, Art, and Times | Ronald Paulson |
| Henry VIII: The Mask of Royalty | Lacey Baldwin Smith |
| Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature | M. H. Abrams |
| Sorties | James Dickey |
| Imagination and Power: A Study of Poetry on Public Themes | Thomas R. Edwards |
| Coleridge, the Damaged Archangel | Norman Fruman |
| Fact and Symbol: Essays in the Sociology of Art and Literature | César Graña |