Here’s the longlist for the 2026 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

Today, the National Book Foundation announced the longlist for the 2026 National Book Award for Nonfiction. These ten titles were selected from a pool of 727 books submitted for consideration by their publishers. This year’s judges for Nonfiction are Eve L. Ewing, Audrey I-Wei Huang, Jonathan C. Slaght, Robert Warrior (Chair), and Lidia Yuknavitch.

The finalists in all categories will be announced on Tuesday, October 6, and the winners revealed at the 77th National Book Awards Ceremony on November 18.

In the meantime, here’s the 2026 Nonfiction longlist:

Rozina Ali, Seasons of Fury: Four Families and the Rise of Islamophobia in America
Crown / Penguin Random House

Colin Asher, The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music
W. W. Norton & Company

Zayd Ayers Dohrn, Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
W. W. Norton & Company

Abdelrahman ElGendy, Huna: A Memoir of Revolution, Prison, and Becoming
Hogarth / Penguin Random House

Camonghne Felix, Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom
One World / Penguin Random House

Wil Haygood, The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home
Knopf / Penguin Random House

Sara Nović, Mother Tongue
Random House / Penguin Random House

Joseph Osmundson, Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood
Bloomsbury Publishing

Angela Pelster, The Evolution of Fire: Essays on Crisis and Becoming
Milkweed Editions

Wendy S. Walters, A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint
Scribner / Simon & Schuster