Traitors: 6the Worst Act of Treason in American History from Benedict Arnold to Robert Hans

There is nothing remarkable about most traitors, writes Sale, an award-winning reporter on terrorism and counterintelligence for UPI. Their lives are""essentially uneventful, most of them lacking in exotic glamour of any kind""--until they are caught. But, he underscores, they have one thing in common: they are criminals and thus""do not think at all like the rest of us do."" Looking at seven traitors, from Benedict Arnold to Whitaker Chambers to Robert Hanssen, he offers brief accounts of their lives, the sequence of""little defections...small dishonesties...disdain for common decency"" and other factors that led up to the big defection, whether it was John Wilkes Booth's assassination of President Lincoln or Elizabeth Bentley's spying for the Soviets. The portraits are sharp and place their subjects in historical context. Anyone interested in how traitors are made will find good reading here.