Countering warfare waged by smaller groups committing terrorist attacks can be better strategized and won with less harm to locals, according to Small Wars, Big Data (Princeton University Press). The authors, including politics professor Jacob Shapiro, use data to argue for approaches such as suppressing rebel activity and analyzing the links between aid and violence.

Hendrik Hartog, a professor of history, details the legal landscape around slavery in the antebellum North through an obscure 1840 legal case involving the question of whether a New Jersey woman named Minna was indeed free. The Trouble with Minna (University of North Carolina Press) reveals a liminal legal space in mid-19th century New Jersey where slavery was usually but not always legal. 

History professor emeritus John M. Murrin’s most influential essays on the American Revolution, the Constitution, and early America have been gathered in Rethinking America: From Empire to Republic (Oxford University Press). The collection ponders fundamental questions about American identity and how the American Revolution informed the nation it produced.