For many people, the '60s marked a turbulent era in which an impassioned youth movement boldly addressed the evils of warfare, discrimination, and massive societal inequities. But for Susan Braudy, author of the vicious Boudin family biography Family Circle, it was a decade when spoiled children of privilege ingested drugs, screwed like rabbits, committed horrible acts of violence, and generally made themselves into public spectacles because Mom and Dad didn't give them enough attention. The Boudins gave the legal world several generations of esteemed, even legendary lawyers, but their most notorious member, Kathy Boudin, made her mark breaking the law, initially with the rest of the Weather Underground, and later in a botched robbery that resulted in the deaths of several police officers. According to Family Circle, Boudin's descent into increasingly hackneyed, self-destructive forms of violent protest represented a way of getting the moral upper hand over her womanizing, highly competitive father Leonard, an attorney for Fidel Castro, Dr. Benjamin Spock, and numerous other leading figures of the far left. Braudy went to college with Kathy Boudin, and Family Circle's ugly portrayal of life in the Weather Underground–whose central accomplishment, Braudy suggests, consisted of generating unwarranted publicity for itself and draining the pleasure out of casual sex and rampant drug use–seems far too much like an elaborate act of revenge against a woman for whom Braudy clearly feels seething contempt. Warts-and-all portrayals of contradictory people are often fascinating, but Braudy essentially holds a magnifying glass up to the Boudins' blemishes and invites readers to marvel at their hideousness. It's tempting to ponder what someone like Tom Wolfe would do with the Boudin family saga, but Braudy isn't interested in being funny or satiric; she's content being bitter and mean-spirited. While compelling and highly readable, Family Circle curdles into a grim cautionary tale about the high price of idealism.