Family Circle 1st (first) edition Text Only

by Susan Braudy

In 1970, Kathy Boudin, revolutionary Weatherman, fled the ruins of a town house on West Eleventh Street in Greenwich Village after a bomb that was being made there exploded, killing three people, and America's sympathy with radicalism fell apart. The Weathermen had started as angry kids who planted stink bombs and emulated the Black Panthers, but the bomb they were building on Eleventh Street was deadly. Kathy, daughter of the celebrated lawyer Leonard Boudin, third generation of the famous Boudin family, emerged naked from the wreckage, was given some clothes by a neighbor, slipped into the night, and went underground for the next eleven years, her name soon appearing on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List.Susan Braudy tells the riveting story of the Boudin family circle through four generations. She writes of Kathy Boudin's childhood, growing up in Manhattan in an ambitious, liberal New York Jewish family, daughter of a revered left-wing labor and civil liberties lawyer and an intellectual poet mother. Braudy writes of Kathy's parents; her father, Leonard, who patterned his life after that of his uncle, the great labor lawyer and leftist legal scholar, Louis B. Boudin (in the 1930s he fought in court for new laws to protect and organize labor unions and was one of the foremost translators and interpreters of Karl Marx). Leonard Boudin fought on behalf of dissenters on the left. He argued the cases of Paul Robeson and the two-time convicted spy Judith Coplon before the Supreme Court, forcing the U.S. government to allow free travel to all citizens and preventing the admission of illegally gathered evidence, rulings that crucially curtailed the power of J. Edgar Hoover.Braudy writes of Boudin's legal work on behalf of such clients as Rockwell Kent and Julian Bond; his defense of Fidel Castro in connection with his seizure of American capital in Cuba; his case on behalf of Dr. Benjamin Spock (arrested for protesting the Vietnam War; Boudin put the war, not Dr. Spock, on trial); and his case on behalf of Daniel Ellsberg, helping him to leak the Pentagon Papers, which set the stage for Nixon's resignation. We see Kathy's mother, Jean Boudin, poet and intellectual, an orphan taken in by a cultivated Jewish family whose circle included Marc Blitzstein and Clifford Odets; her courtship and marriage to Leonard (they were toasted as "the most gorgeous couple of the left"); her years as the dutiful, devoted wife to a husband who conducted countless affairs; her suicide attempt when Kathy was nine. And we see Leonard's lifelong mentor and competitor—his brother-in-law, the brilliant, scrappy independent journalist and government critic I. F. Stone, a born leader and fighter who made war on government bureaucrats (believing they usurped power) and on his deadly enemy, J. Edgar Hoover.We follow Kathy at Bryn Mawr, organizing the school's maids to demand fair wages, graduating magna cum laude in the top five of her class; failing to get into Yale Law School (while her brother was a star at Harvard); helping to plan the riots at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago and the "Days of Rage" that followed; breaking Black Panther Assata Shakur out of jail; bombing the headquarters of the Manhattan Police Department and the Capitol in Washington; and finally, in 1981, being part of the botched robbery of a Brinks truck that turned into a bloodbath (two policemen and one Brinks guard were killed), which resulted in her trial with her father as her lawyer; her years in Bedford Hills prison as a model prisoner, teacher, and AIDS activist—and her release after twenty-two years.A huge, rich, riveting book—a story of idealism and passion; of law and brilliant legal minds; of political intrigue and government witch-hunts; of SDS and the Days of Rage; of Vietnam protests and underground revolutionary terrorism; and of the golden family at the center of this vortex, who came to be seen through five decades as the very emblem of the American left. About the Susan Braudy was born in Philadelphia and was educated at Bryn Mawr, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale. She has written for many magazines, including the New York Times, Newsweek, and The Atlantic Monthly. She is the author of four previous books, among them This Crazy Thing Called Love. She lives in New York City.

Genres: History, Biography, Politics

Hardcover

First published October 14, 2003

Reviews

[Stefania Dzhanamova · Rating 2 out of 5]

In her book, Susan Braudy attempts to record the story of Kathy Boudin, a member of the Weather Underground. This attempt could have been successful, as Braudy knew Kathy Boudin personally and had insight into her character, but she focuses too much on making the reader sympathize with her student radical friend. In my case, her efforts were fruitless and even intensified my dislike for Boudin.

The author met Kathy in Bryn Mawr College in 1961, when she was a junior and Kathy was a freshman. Kathy fascinated her at first sight with her already fully formed and condescending adult views on politics and power. It was Kathy who introduced her to people who evoked the student activists' admiration, such as journalist and government critic Izzy Stone, who had achieved fame in the 1950s for fighting for the rights of those accused of having been members of the American Communist Party, Michael Meeropol, the son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, whom Kathy was dating, and Norman Thomas, the former Socialist Party candidate for president, who have narrowly prevailed over President John F. Kennedy in a mock presidential election in Kathy's high school. 

To Susan, Kathy Boudin was apparently everything that she wanted to be, but did not have the courage to become. Although they did not keep in touch after 1968, she continued to follow her life through stories of mutual acquaintances and newspapers. She cried when she learned that Kathy had fled the Greenwich townhouse naked after the explosion in which Diana Oughton, Susan's neighbor at Bryn Mawr, and Cathlyn Wilkerson, the girlfriend of Susan's brother, perished. She was also stunned to read about her arrest for robbery and murder in 1981. 

I understand that to the author, Kathy must have meant a lot, but this does not excuse her constant attempts to endear her to the reader. It is disturbing that she has so much sympathy for someone who committed murder and does not spare any for the three victims – two policemen and one security guard – whose only fault was being in the wrong place at the wrong time and trying to stop a group of student radicals from doing something stupid and unnecessary. I do not understand why she believes that the reader will like Boudin after learning her story, which is that of a typical delusional young radical.

I personally feel no sympathy for her and the other Weathermen. They were large scale vandals and small scale terrorists, who considered themselves the saviors of America from the Establishment. Drunk on the idea of their own significance, they quickly forgot that their mission and that of their bigger predecessor, Students for a Democratic Society, was to help alert the government to the fact that it should work to put an end to racial discrimination and the Vietnam conflict. Their activism degraded into chaotic urban insurgency that proved to be counter-productive because it was disorganized and aimed at the wrong targets. For instance, operations such as the attack on the Harvard Center of International Affairs, in the course of which the personnel was beaten, and bombings of police precincts were foolish and led to the alienation of the American public, who did not understand and like the random violence that the Weather Underground embraced as its strategy. 

The attempted robbery of an armored truck for which Kathy Boudin was arrested was a similarly irrational action that was designed to attract attention to what remained of the Weather Underground and to prove something – what precisely is not clear – to the American government. In the process, three innocent people were murdered, and this conveniently played into the hands of those whom the radicals were trying to oppose. It provoked the outrage of the public, which sympathized with the families of the victims, and it gave the opponents of the protest movement more reasons to disparage all activists for social change as aimless rebels with terrorist tendencies. 

This is why I found the author's attempts to portray Boudin as a better person than she was and find an excuse for her actions frustrating. As much as Braudy wants the reader to believe so, her explanation that Boudin engaged in reckless behavior throughout her life because she had to compete for her father's attention does not move the blame fro what she did off her and onto her father. Upon learning what the author was planning to write about her, Boudin herself informed Susan through her lawyer, Victor Rabinowitz, that she was not interested in supporting a work that cast her father in a negative light.

FAMILY CIRCLE is an account of Kathy Boudin's life that reflects Braudy's perception of her, not who she really was. This book should be treated as a novel about a student radical more than as a biography. 

[Seán · Rating 3 out of 5]

After Boudin was arrested in Nyack for her participation in the Brinks robbery in 1981, she was shuttled back and forth from Rockland County Jail to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Manhattan and finally to Orange County Jail in good old Goshen, N.Y. Back then my father was working for the County Attorney and one of his responsibilities was to monitor the conditions of OCJ's most famous prisoners (I learned from Braundy that this was probably due to Leonard Boudin's myriad pre-trial motions).

In any event, one day he was walking through OCJ asking after the prisoners when a certain Kathy Boudin called out to a comrade, "Don't talk to him! He's a pig agent of the state!" In riposte, and in perhaps his finest moment, Dad shouts back, "Hey now, I'm a pig agent for the county."

As for the book? Not bad.

[Florence Buchholz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started out thinking that this book was written by the Kitty Kelly for left wingers. It seemed that the author did not express the political philosophy behing Kathy and Leonard's actions, focusing instead on personal data of questionable verity. But toward the end of the book, during Kathy's prison years I felt that I could understand her life experiences more fully. I still don't claim to understand how society's most intelligent and privileged young people who performed altruistic acts of public service morphed into a criminally insane group of bank robbers. But it made for a fascinating read.

[Roberta Gerson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. While I was reading "American Pastoral" by Philip Roth, a fictionalized version of a daughter from a well-off family who becomes a radical bomber, I came across this book, the true story of Kathy Boudin, and its review in the WSJ. I took this book out of the library and couldn't put it down. The author is a wonderful writer. It brought back memories of the Vietnam War and the protests, including unfortunately the bombings and robberies that were done in the name of "peace." I remember being either in high school or college when a police officer with nine children was shot in the back as he was responding to a bank robbery in the Brighton section of Boston. Although the robbery in Brighton did not involve Kathy Boudin (the robbery for which she was apprehended finally was a Brinks robbery in New York or New Jersey), it was eerily similar. Now, I need to go back to the Philip Roth book and finish it.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling. A fascinating look at a family caught up in liberation politics.

[Peggy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Susan Braudy, a former classmate of Kathy Boudin goes into great detail to tell not only Kathy Boudin's life as part of the radical group the Weathermen (Weather Underground), but also about her liberal family, and her leftist father.
Includes information based on extensive research, interviews, court documents, and family photos are included.
Kathy Boudin is the mother of Chesa Boudin the San Francisco District Attorney who was raised by Bill Ayers.

[Marty Durham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent history to know! Not many do. The writing was ok, personal. Worth the time just to know history without the news.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book worth reading if you ever wondered "What were they thinking?" when the 60's turned to violence. I found it difficult to have much sympathy for Kathy Boudin but I did come away with a bit more understanding of how people with good intentions and laudable goals can drift into violence.

I found Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen by Mark Rudd to be a more believable and detailed book about the era.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

The insulting title provides a clue to the author's point of view. The Left has a long history of fighting against inherited aristocracy. As a person of the Left, I certainly do not consider the Boudin family as aristocrats. Contributors, valued comrades, but not even leaders.

Braudy distorts history as I have learned it, uses adjectives to belittle weather people and the 60's new left, and widely engages in pseudo-pychoanalysis.

In spite of the author's bias, and that I do not think she is a good writer, she has a fascinating story to tell.

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

People on the left have money too and this is what they do with it. Fascinating story about what may have destroyed power of the democratic party.