Books: A Sorry Old Affair

THE TRAITOR AND THE SPY (431 pp.) —James Thomas Flexner—Harcourt, Brace ($5.75).

Even in a day when the traitor has become a headline staple, the name of Benedict Arnold remains the U.S.'s symbol of ultimate treachery. His was the classic sellout, the shocker that reduced a national hero to a despised knave. Yet there are still those ready to defend him as a maligned soldier who was goaded into villainy, and schoolteachers in his home state of Connecticut have complained that it becomes increasingly difficult to present him as a traitor.

This week there is black news for Arnold's sentimental defenders. In...

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