Books Educated Book by Tara Westover

"Educated: A Memoir," by Tara Westover, is a 2018 memoir that narrates her extraordinary journey from growing up in a survivalist Mormon family in rural Idaho, where she had no formal education, to earning a PhD in history from Cambridge University. The book chronicles her struggle against her father's extremist beliefs—rejecting government, schools, and medical institutions—and her determination to pursue education despite her isolated and oppressive upbringing.

Westover was born the youngest of seven children to parents deeply skeptical of public institutions. Her father, paranoid and controlling, forbade schooling and medical care, leaving her to be raised amid dangerous working conditions and family dysfunction. At 17, with no prior formal schooling, she began attending college at Brigham Young University, which broadened her worldview and led her further academically despite ongoing family conflicts, including confronting abuse within the family. The memoir explores themes of family loyalty, self-invention, trauma, forgiveness, and the transformative power of education.