Books

Silvia Danielak, an assistant professor at George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, is the author of Peace Infrastructures: How UN Peace Operations Build Roads, Bridges, and Solar Farms in the Pursuit of Sustainability (MIT Press, April 2026), the first comprehensive account of infrastructure building in United Nations peace operations. Danielak’s work focuses on sociospatial and infrastructure planning in conflict settings and as part of peace efforts, as well as its coalition with climate and environmental efforts.

Mahmut Cengiz, PhD Public Policy ’10, of George Mason's Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center, is a seasoned expert in terrorism, organized crime, and illicit economies. His work focuses on the dynamics of terrorism, smuggling, and criminal networks and contributes significantly to understanding and combating these global challenges. His latest book, Typologies of Terrorist Organizations: Conceptual Lenses and Counterterrorism Measures (Carolina Academic Press, September 2025), was cowritten with Mitchel Roth and Huseyin Cinoglu.

George Mason English professor Kyoko Mori writes both fiction and nonfiction. Her latest book, Cat and Bird, has been called a “memoir in animals” and focuses on the six house cats who defined the major eras of her life as a writer.

Since 1989, more than 3,000 people have been exonerated after being wrongly convicted. In his new book, The Politics of Innocence: How Wrongful Convictions Shape Public Opinion (New York University Press, September 2023), Robert J. Norris, associate professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society, and his coauthors explore the political dynamics that shape the innocence movement.

Are we meta yet? A book about AI is cowritten by AI, along with Schar School associate professor Alan R. Shark, who teaches technology policy in government. AI created that intimidating cover, too.

Mason Creative Writing Professor Tania James is having an amazing year. Since her novel Loot was released by Knopf in June 2023, the accolades haven’t stopped.

In her new book, Governing Death, Making Persons: The New Chinese Way of Death (Cornell University Press, January 2023), Mason anthropology professor Huwy-min Lucia Liu writes about how economic reforms and changes in the management of death in China have affected the governance of persons.

A new book by Schar School associate professor Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera features an exclusive interview with the former secretary for public safety for Mexico. He happens to be in jail awaiting trial for corruption.