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.
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.
“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
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.
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.
***THE INSTANT New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and IndieBound BESTSELLER*** An NPR Book of the Day Picking up where the New York Times bestselling Front Row at the Trump Show left off, this is the explosive look at the aftermath of the election—and the events that followed Donald Trump’s leaving the White House all the way to January 6—from ABC News' chief Washington correspondent. Nobody is in a better position to tell the story of the shocking final chapter of the Trump show than Jonathan Karl. As the reporter who has known Donald Trump longer than any other White House correspondent, Karl told the story of Trump’s rise in the New York Times bestseller Front Row at the Trump Show. Now he tells the story of Trump’s downfall, complete with riveting behind-the-scenes accounts of some of the darkest days in the history of the American presidency and packed with original reporting and on-the-record interviews with central figures in this drama who are telling their stories for the first time. This is a definitive account of what was really going on during the final weeks and months of the Trump presidency and what it means for the future of the Republican Party, by a reporter who was there for it all. He has been taunted, praised, and vilified by Donald Trump, and now Jonathan Karl finds himself in a singular position to deliver the truth.
Conservative columnist West uncovers how and when America gave up its core ideals and began the march toward socialism. She digs into the modern political landscape, dominated by President Barack Obama, to ask how it is that America turned its back on its basic beliefs.
The remarkable story of the last American spy of the Cold War: Aldrich “Rick” Ames, the most destructive traitor in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency Tim Weiner, David Johnston, and Neil A. Lewis, reporters for The New York Times, tell how the barons of the CIA could not believe that its headquarters harbored a traitor. For years, the Agency was baffled by a wily Russian spymaster who played a high-stakes chess game against the Americans, deceiving the CIA into thinking that there were other moles—or no moles at all. It took nearly eight years for the CIA to share the full facts of the scenario with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Once they knew those facts, the men and women of the FBI tracked Aldrich Ames day and night for nine months before they arrested him. They tell their story here in astonishing detail for the first time. The interviews are entirely on-the-record. There are no pseudonyms, anonymous quotes, or invented scenes. The men betrayed by Ames were real people, and the stories of their lives are the true history of the espionage game in the waning years of the Cold War.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER The man who lies bleeding to death in a London brickyard is no ordinary drifter but a secret informant with details of an international plot against the British government. Special Branch officer Thomas Pitt, hastening to rendezvous with him, arrives seconds after the knife-wielding assassin—who, in turn, flees on an erratic course that leads Pitt in wild pursuit to picturesque St. Malo on the French coast. Meanwhile, Pitt’s supervisor, Victor Narraway, stands accused of embezzling government funds. Since the man who ruined Narraway’s career is in Ireland, Pitt’s clever wife, Charlotte, agrees to pose as Narraway’s sister and accompany him to Dublin to investigate. But unknown to Pitt and Narraway, a shadowy plotter is setting a trap that, once sprung, could destroy not just reputations but the British empire itself.
