For a distinguished book of non-fiction by an American author that is not eligible for consideration in any other category, Five thousand dollars ($5,000).

Awarded to Annals of the Former World by John McPhee (Farrar)

Columbia University Provost Jonathan R. Cole (right) presents John McPhee with the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.

Finalists

Also nominated as finalists in this category were: "Crime and Punishment in America" by Elliott Currie (Metropolitan Books), and "The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do" by Judith Rich Harris (Free Press).