Educated

Lacking any formal education, Tara Westover emerged from a hardscrabble background which she describes in gripping detail to enroll in Brigham Young University as a teenager. After graduating with a BA, she earned two degrees from Cambridge – a MPhil and a PhD in history – and she taught at Harvard as a visiting fellow.
Accidents and abuse were part of Westover’s upbringing. Classrooms and medical care weren’t. Born in 1986, she grew up in rural Idaho, the youngest of seven. Her father’s mental illness defined her repressive, restricted, violent world. Westover draws on her vivid memories and journal entries to illustrate the physical, emotional and intellectual landscapes of her life.

All of my father’s stories were about the mountain, our valley, our jagged little patch of Idaho. He never told me what to do if I left the mountain.Tara Westover

 The Washington Post, O:The Oprah Magazine, NPR, The Guardian, Good Morning America and other print and broadcast outlets named this number one New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe bestseller among the Best Books of the Year. Vogue wrote, “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?” The New Yorker said, “Westover is a keen and honest guide to the difficulties of filial love and to the enchantment of embracing a life of the mind.”