“Seamlessly combines analytic rigor with personal memoir . . . its arguments are drawn from political history . . . Biblical commentary . . . novels and biographies.” (Amélie Rorty, Tufts University) Adultery, treason, and apostasy no longer carry the weight they once did. Yet we constantly see and hear stories of betrayal. Avishai Margalit argues that the tension between the ubiquity of betrayal and the loosening of its hold is a sign of the strain between ethics and morality, between thick and thin human relations. On Betrayal offers a philosophical account of thick human relations?relationships with friends, family, and core communities?through their pathology, betrayal. Judgments of betrayal often shift unreliably. A traitor to one side is a hero to the other. Yet the notion of what it means to betray is remarkably consistent across cultures and eras. Betrayal undermines thick trust, dissolving the glue that holds our most meaningful relationships together. On Betrayal is about ethics: what we owe to the people and groups that give us our sense of belonging. Drawing on literary, historical, and personal sources, Maraglit examines what our thick relationships are and should be and revives the long-discarded notion of fraternity. “Provocative and illuminating.” —Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study “Witty and wise, precise and profound, On Betrayal is an easy but deep read: it sees life as it really is with all its turmoil.” —The Christian Century “The range of Margalit’s examples is astonishing. . . . He is much more knowledgeable about and comfortable with communities (and in communities) than most philosophers are, and so he is very good at recognizing when they go wrong.” —New York Review of Books

Betrayal and Treason examines betrayals as violations of both trust and loyalty. It offers a typology based on membership in or out of collectives within the contexts of secrecy/non-secrecy. The book shows that betrayals include such categories as espionage, whistle-blowing, infidelity, political turncoating, conversions, collaboration with occupying forces, informers, mutinies, defections, strike-breakers, professional, intellectual, and international betrayals, human rights violations, surveillance, assassinations, and state sponsored terror. Each one of the categories is presented with enticing, stimulating, and appropriate real-life illustrations and narratives.The book focuses on treason, examines diverse cultures (European countries, Israel, Canada, the United States) and such periods as World War II, the conquest of Mexico, and looks at such figures as Benedict Arnold, Ezra Pound, Edward VIII, Malinche, Vindkun Quisling, Lord Haw Haw, Tokyo Rose, and a host of others. Since World War II is an excellent period through which one can examine issues of treason, and since there has been such an increased interest in World War II, this book places a particular emphasis on that period and war. Betrayal and Treason is original in its conceptual framework, and in its breadth and depth of coverage. Yet judging by the amount of books published on similar topics in the past, there can hardly be a doubt that there has always been a genuine demand and "hunger" for an inclusive and integrative book such as this one. By offering a new and interpretive framework for betrayals, this book can serve both scholars and lay people alike in gaining a much better understanding of such a complex and fascinating behavior as betrayal.

Set against the framework of modern political concerns, Treason: Medieval and Early Modern Adultery, Betrayal, and Shame considers the various forms of treachery in a variety of sources, including literature, historical chronicles, and material culture creating a complex portrait of the development of this high crime.

How did the academy react to the rise, dominance, and ultimate fall of Germany's Third Reich? Did German professors of the humanities have to tell themselves lies about their regime's activities or its victims to sleep at night? Did they endorse the regime? Or did they look the other way, whether out of deliberate denial or out of fear for their own personal safety? The Betrayal of the Humanities: The University during the Third Reich is a collection of groundbreaking essays that shed light on this previously overlooked piece of history. The Betrayal of the Humanities accepts the regrettable news that academics and intellectuals in Nazi Germany betrayed the humanities, and explores what went wrong, what occurred at the universities, and what happened to the major disciplines of the humanities under National Socialism. The Betrayal of the Humanities details not only how individual scholars, particular departments, and even entire universities collaborated with the Nazi regime but also examines the legacy of this era on higher education in Germany. In particular, it looks at the peculiar position of many German scholars in the post-war world having to defend their own work, or the work of their mentors, while simultaneously not appearing to accept Nazism.

In An Ethics of Betrayal, Crystal Parikh investigates the theme and tropes of betrayal and treason in Asian American and Chicano/Latino literary and cultural narratives. In considering betrayal from an ethical perspective, one grounded in the theories of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, Parikh argues that the minority subject is obligated in a primary, preontological, and irrecusable relation of responsibility to the Other. Episodes of betrayal and treason allegorize the position of this subject, beholden to the many others who embody the alterity of existence and whose demands upon the subject result in transgressions of intimacy and loyalty. In this first major comparative study of narratives by and about Asian Americans and Latinos, Parikh considers writings by Frank Chin, Gish Jen, Chang-rae Lee, Eric Liu, Américo Parades, and Richard Rodriguez, as well as narratives about the persecution of Wen Ho Lee and the rescue and return of Elian González. By addressing the conflicts at the heart of filiality, the public dimensions of language in the constitution of minority "community," and the mercenary mobilizations of "model minority" status, An Ethics of Betrayal seriously engages the challenges of conducting ethnic and critical race studies based on the uncompromising and unromantic ideas of justice, reciprocity, and ethical society.

While there have been other books about Aldrich Ames, Circle of Treason is the first account written by CIA agents who were key members of the CIA team that conducted the intense “Ames Mole Hunt.” Sandra Grimes and Jeanne Vertefeuille were two of the five principals of the CIA team tasked with hunting one of their own and were directly responsible for identifying Ames as the mole, leading to his arrest and conviction. One of the most destructive traitors in American history, CIA officer Aldrich Ames provided information to the Soviet Union that contributed to the deaths of at least ten Soviet intelligence officers who spied for the United States. In this book, the two CIA officers directly responsible for tracking down Ames chronicle their involvement in the hunt for a mole. Considering it their personal mission, Grimes and Vertefeuille dedicated themselves to identifying the traitor responsible for the execution or imprisonment of the Soviet agents with whom they worked. Their efforts eventually led them to a long-time acquaintance and coworker in the CIA’s Soviet-East European division and Counterintelligence Center, Aldrich Ames. Not only is this the first book to be written by the CIA principals involved, but it is also the first to provide details of the operational contact with the agents Ames betrayed. The book covers the political aftermath of Ames’s arrest, including the Congressional wrath for not identifying him sooner, the FBI/CIA debriefings following Ames’s plea bargain, and a retrospective of Ames the person and Ames the spy. It is also the compelling story of two female agents, who overcame gender barriers and succeeded in bringing Ames to justice in a historically male-oriented organization. Now retired from the CIA, Grimes and Vertefeuille are finally able to tell this inside story of the CIA’s most notorious traitor and the men he betrayed.

In Betrayals and Treason Nachman Ben-Yehuda identifies the universal structure of betrayals as the violation of trust and loyalty and charts the different manifestations and constructions of these violations, all within numerous cases across time, place, and cultures. Betrayals do not just lie in the eyes of the beholder, completely relative. While the very idea of betrayals is a social construct, underlying it is a universal structure of violations of both trust and loyalty. Whenever this structure materializes, the label "betrayal" is invoked and applied.