| Title | Author | Shortlisted |
|---|
| The Executioner's Song | Norman Mailer | |
| Rites of Passage | William Golding | |
| How Far Can You Go? | David Lodge | |
| The Fountains of Paradise | Arthur C. Clarke | |
| O Grande Mentecapto | Fernando Sabino | |
| Sophie's Choice | William Styron | |
| The World According to Garp | John Irving | |
| Lauren Bacall by Myself | Lauren Bacall | |
| And I Worked at the Writer's Trade: Chapters of Literary History 1918–1978 | Malcolm Cowley | |
| The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt | Edmund Morris | |
| Max Perkins: Editor of Genius | A. Scott Berg | |
| Julia Child and More Company | Julia Child | |
| The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations | Christopher Lasch | |
| The Right Stuff | Tom Wolfe | |
| The Snow Leopard | Peter Matthiessen | |
| Congressional Quarterly's Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court | Elder Witt | |
| The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows 1946–present | Tim Brooks | |
| The White House Years | Henry A. Kissinger | |
| A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century | Barbara W. Tuchman | |
| The Gnostic Gospels | Elaine Pagels | |
| A Severe Mercy | Sheldon Vanauken | |
| The Ghost Writer | Philip Roth | |
| Earthly Powers | Anthony Burgess | |
| A Month in the Country | J. L. Carr | |
| Clear Light of Day | Anita Desai | |
| The Beggar Maid | Alice Munro | |
| No Country for Young Men | Julia O'Faolain | |
| Pascali's Island | Barry Unsworth | |
| Titan | John Varley | |
| Jem | Frederik Pohl | |
| Harpist in the Wind | Patricia A. McKillip | |
| On Wings of Song | Thomas M. Disch | |
| Birdy | William Wharton | |
| Just Above My Head | James Baldwin | |
| Endless Love | Scott Spencer | |
| Collected Stories | Paul Bowles | |
| Violet Clay | Gail Godwin | |
| Too Far to Go | John Updike | |
| Miss MacIntosh, My Darling | Marguerite Young | |
| I'm Dancing As Fast As I Can | Barbara Gordon | |
| Front and Center | John Houseman | |
| Obituaries | William Saroyan | |
| Marquand: An American Life | Millicent Bell | |
| Bloomsbury: A House of Lions | Leon Edel | |
| Bernard Berenson: The Making of a Connoisseur | Ernest Samuels | |
| Samuel Johnson | W. Jackson Bate | |
| American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur | William Manchester | |
| Robert Kennedy and His Times | Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. | |
| Design for Independent Living: The Environment and Physically Disabled People | Barbara Winslow | |
| Your Second Life: Vitality and Growth in Middle and Later Years from the Experiences of the Sage Program | Gay Gaer Luce | |
| The Pritikin Program for Diet and Exercise | Nathan Pritikin | |
| Privacy: How to Protect What's Left of It | Robert Ellis Smith | |
| Babysense: A Practical and Supportive Guide to Baby Care | Frances Wells Burck | |
| The Integral Urban House: Self-Reliant Living in the City | Farallones Institute | |
| Pregnancy and Childbirth: The Complete Guide for a New Life | Tracy Hotchner | |
| Alice, Let's Eat: Further Adventures of a Happy Eater | Calvin Trillin | |
| America Revised | Frances FitzGerald | |
| The Powers That Be | David Halberstam | |
| A Nervous Splendor: Vienna, 1888–1889 | Frederic Morton | |
| The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA | Thomas Powers | |
| Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life | Sissela Bok | |
| Of Wolves and Men | Barry Lopez | |
| Encyclopedia of China Today | Frederic M. Kaplan, Julian M. Sopin, and Stephen Andors | |
| Arts in America: A Bibliography | Bernard Karpel | |
| Encyclopedia of American Religions | J. Gordon Melton | |
| Index to Children's Songs | Carolyn Sue Peterson and Ann D. Fenton | |
| The Ms. Guide to a Woman's Health | Cynthia W. Cooke, M.D., and Susan Dworkin | |
| The Solar Age Resource Book | Solar Age magazine editors | |
| I Hear America Talking: An Illustrated History of American Words and Phrases | Stuart Berg Flexner | |
| Kids: Day In and Day Out: a parents' manual | Elisabeth L. Scharlatt | |
| Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 | Robert Dallek | |
| Decline of Bismarck's European Order: Franco-Russian Relations, 1875–1890 | George F. Kennan | |
| Utopian Thought in the Western World | Frank E. Manuel | |
| Munich: The Price of Peace | Telford Taylor | |
| The Making of Jazz: A Comprehensive History | James Lincoln Collier | |
| The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America | Daniel J. Kevles | |
| Perjury: The Hiss–Chambers Case | Allen Weinstein | |
| In Search of History: A Personal Adventure | Theodore H. White | |
| The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation | Peter L. Berger | |
| Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture | Brevard S. Childs | |
| Love Is Stronger Than Death | Peter Kreeft | |
| The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach | Jack B. Rogers | |
| Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah | Richard Bach | |
| The Helper | Catherine Marshall | |