Harvard University Prof. Maya Jasanoff is one of three finalists for the $50,000 George Washington Book Prize. Administrators of the prize at Washington College announces that Jasanoff earned the honor with “Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World,” published by Knopf.

The prize, which is co-sponsored by Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and George Washington’s Mount Vernon, recognizes the past year’s best books on the nation’s founding era, especially those that have the potential to advance broad public understanding of American history. Three distinguished historians served as jurors for the 2012 prize -- Richard Beeman, the John Welsh Centennial Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania and the 2010 winner of the George Washington Book Prize; Thomas Fleming, distinguished historian and author; and Marla R. Miller of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst....