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Educated

Tara Westover, 2018

Raised without school on an Idaho mountain, Tara Westover taught herself her way into college and on to a Cambridge PhD. Learning to think for herself cost her family.

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15 parts, about 33 minutes to read.

Why read it

  • Tells of a childhood on an Idaho mountain with no school, no doctors and a father who feared the Government
  • Shows how she studied for a college entrance test with her brother's help, reached a university, and there first heard of the Holocaust
  • Follows the cost of choosing her own mind over family loyalty, and how her family remembers the same events differently

Who it is for

  • Readers of memoir about leaving a controlling family
  • Readers curious what schooling and learning change in a person
  • People torn between family loyalty and their own path

What the summary covers

  1. Buck's Peak3 min
  2. My Mother and Father2 min
  3. Crashes and Departures2 min
  4. The Junkyard2 min
  5. Fire2 min
  6. Shawn2 min
  7. Learning Alone3 min
  8. Brigham Young University2 min
  9. Ruby Ridge2 min
  10. The Explosion2 min
  11. Cambridge3 min
  12. Liberty2 min
  13. The Knife2 min
  14. Breakdown and Doctorate2 min
  15. Educated2 min

Recommended by

  • Barack Obama44th President of the United States
  • Bill GatesMicrosoft cofounder and philanthropist
  • Amy ChuaYale law professor and author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
    Heart-wrenching . . . a beautiful testament to the power of education to open eyes and change lives.

About the author

  • Tara WestoverAmerican memoirist, essayist and historian
    • Born in 1986 in rural Idaho, on the edge of a mountain, with no birth certificate issued.
    • The seventh child of Mormon parents who were doomsday preppers.
    • Taught herself algebra and trigonometry and scored high enough on the ACT to enter Brigham Young University.
    • Stepped into a classroom for the first time in her life at college.
    • Nearly dropped out for lack of money; a Pell grant of $4,000 let her stay and buy textbooks.
    • Earned a master's degree at Trinity College, Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge scholar, and was a visiting fellow at Harvard in 2010.
    • Holds a PhD in intellectual history from Trinity College, Cambridge.
    • Her family split in 2009 over what she told them, an estrangement she wrote about in Educated.

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