Educated

A Memoir

By: Tara Westover

Narrated by: Julia Whelan

Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

#1 NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER • One of the most acclaimed books of our time: an unforgettable memoir about a young woman who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University

“Extraordinary . . . an act of courage and self-invention.”—The New York Times

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR • BILL GATES’S HOLIDAY READING LIST • FINALIST: National Book Critics Circle’s Award In Autobiography and John Leonard Prize For Best First Book • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award • Los Angeles Times Book Prize

Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

“Beautiful and propulsive . . . Despite the singularity of [Westover’s] childhood, the questions her book poses are universal: How much of ourselves should we give to those we love? And how much must we betray them to grow up?”—Vogue

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, O: The Oprah Magazine, Time, NPR, Good Morning America, San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, The Economist, Financial Times, Newsday, New York Post, theSkimm, Refinery29, Bloomberg, Self, Real Simple, Town & Country, Bustle, Paste, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, LibraryReads, Book Riot, Pamela Paul, KQED, New York Public Library

©2018 Tara Westover (P)2018 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Westover has somehow managed not only to capture her unsurpassably exceptional upbringing, but to make her current situation seem not so exceptional at all, and resonant for many others.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Westover is a keen and honest guide to the difficulties of filial love, and to the enchantment of embracing a life of the mind.”—The New Yorker

“An amazing story, and truly inspiring. It’s even better than you’ve heard.”—Bill Gates

Couldn't stop listening!

I finished this book in two days flat. Tara's writing transports you into the story completely. Her vulnerability and downright astonishing history of her life is unforgettable. I recommend this book for anyone struggling in relationships dominated with control and abuse. Her bravery is catching.

Gripping and insightful

The most complete and articulate description I've ever read of what it is like to come to grips with the realization of one's self existence, desires, and beliefs.
I come from a similar background. Reading this was very helpful. I found myself asking new questions and reevaluating events of my own past.

What a mess religion makes of life and limb!

What courage and pain it takes to break free from the shackles of those convicted and convinced of gobbledegook. Each painful and freeing step of a daughter is told with honesty and the growth of her self-awareness is inspiring for everyone.

Best book I've read in years

Engaging from the first word. Very refreshing to hear a story of someone overcoming adversity with true courage and strength of character told with humility and without self aggrandizement.

This is not a book I would normally have chosen, and I found it surprisingly captivating

A new perspective.

A fellow high school English teacher recommended this memoir to me. Now, full disclosure: memoirs are far from my favorite genre. Titles such as Liars Club and Glass Castle-I quickly found tiring.

However, I found Westover’s writing to be refreshing for its openness and unapologetic vulnerability. For me, I appreciated being able to follow her psychological through wrestling with the family dynamic. I often found myself frustrated that she kept returning to the mountain and her willingness to trust her brother again and again.

And this willingness, from my perspective, was insightful to try to better understand why customs stay and return to their abusers.

My rating of a 4 stems from unanswered questions. 3 of the 7 children obtained PH.Ds... why was there such a dichotomy in the family? How was this possible with next to no formal education? There is no doubt that Tara has been professionally and academically successful. But, I can’t help but be uncomfortable with some questions I have regarding the path to success. And, these questions, for me, gnaw at the elements of the story that embrace American idealism (a large part of the text). Had I been able to obtain more clarification on these fine points- this text would have exceeded all expectations of a memoir.

Wow. Got WAY more than I bargained for here!

Picked this book out of my “recommendations” and it’s been one of my absolute favorites so far. Tara Westover has written an account of her life that makes you want to reach through your headphones/radio and pull her out and not only give her a hug/high five but ask SO many more questions at the end. I looked her up on google after this book and was shocked to see that she and I are the exact same age and just could not believe just how much she pulled herself out of a life she wasn’t sure she was meant for into an even more uncertain and accomplished future. The book gives an unmatched insight into her thoughts and inner conflicts and has managed to teach me several things about judging a situation as complex as hers soley from the outside. This book is not only brilliantly written and about ascending to higher learning when coming from a “salt of the earth” family, but how to eventually trust yourself and just how hard not looking back can be. Thank you, Tara, for making me a more understanding and, yes, educated human being!

Heart wrenching

This book was amazing and terrifying to read. I have been raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints but my experience was extremely different. This opened my eyes to the complexities of being raised in a family with mental illness and abuse. I applaud Ms. Weyland for her openness and vulnerability. This book shook me to my core. So many different conflicting feelings to grapple with, fear, belonging, pain, anger, hurt, camaraderie. So glad she has found peace after so many challenges. Thank you for sharing your story.

Disturbing

I really want to believe that this is all a work of fiction and that stories like this don’t exist ANYWHERE, and yet I found myself at the point that I simply could not stop reading. I still feel incomplete, like there should be a follow up book where the evil are punished or stand trial for their actions. All in all worth the read. Great book

Brilliance finds different homes.

A compelling memoir from a brilliant woman who sprang from the union of brilliant but uneducated parents in rural Idaho, torn by a family where religious fervor, male dominance, abuse, female submission (grounded in Mormon fundamentalism), and sibling friction all mixed together into a stew of self-doubt, self-discovery, and awakening. For someone unaware of Mormon tradition and culture, or it’s manifestations in rural settings like author’s home in Idaho, this story would likely be one of a woman finding her voice after freeing herself from the shackles of her father’s and brother’s religious, physical, and religious abuse and oppression. But for a male Mormon like me, it was richer, deeper, and more daunting story of how ignorance (despite natural, even brilliant, intelligence) distorts faith and religion. If Mormonism was as her father manifest it, the author could no more embrace the faith than she could endure her father. She was doubly victimized, left without her parents and also her faith, even though her memoir hardly dwells on the latter. I am saddened to think that Idaho is filled with people not unlike her father, not as naturally intelligent as he, but similarly ignorant yet faithfully embracing a Mormonism distorted by that ignorance. Hard to explain how natural intelligence and ignorance can find place in the same person, but it happens. The author’s struggle to make peace, having inherited her parents’ intelligence but discarding their ignorance, with her family makes for a story worth reading (or in my case, listening to). And in the end, once rejecting the ignorance there could be no reconciliation - the consequences of ignorance can find no place with unrestrained intelligence. They are incompatible in the end.

Emotional, Interesting, & Respectful

I loved the way that Tara Westover catalogued her memories and included footnotes to demonstrate when someone may have remembered something differently. She definitely tried to make her account as reliable as possible. Her story is amazing and it must have taken a lot of courage to publish it. It is an interesting statement on memories and the way we create them, keep them, and change them. I'm a practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and I appreciated her description of her relationship with that faith. I feel like she described the religion matter-of-factly and respectfully, despite her painful association to it due to her father's misinterpretation of the religion.