Name: Educated
ISBN: 9780593105320

Julia Whelan

Tara Westover

A Memoir

Educated

Denisse Garcia Ramírez 

Not knowing for certain, but refusing to give way to those who claim certainty, was a privilege I had never allowed myself. My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs. 

Kyler Phillips

Essence

All my life those instincts had been instructing me in this single doctrine—that the odds are better if you rely only on yourself.

stephie

clara

Hazal Özlem

Bu rüzgarda durabiliyorum çünkü durmam için çaba harcamam gerekmiyor..Rüzgar rüzgardır sonuçta. Aynı esintilere yerde dayanabiliyorsanız, havada da dayanırsınız. Bir fark yok arada. Kafanızdaki fark dışında.

angie

It’s strange how you give the people you love so much power over you.

“ It has never occurred to you," he said, “that you might have as much right to be here as anyone." 

Guilt is the fear of one's own wretchedness. 

We are all of us more complicated than the roles we are assigned in the stories other people tell.

That night I called on her and she didn’t answer. She left me. She stayed in the mirror. The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self.

But what has come between me and my father is more than time or distance. It is a change in the self. I am not the child my father raised, but he is the father who raised her.

But vindication has no power over guilt. No amount of anger or rage directed at others can subdue it, because guilt is never about them. Guilt is the fear of one’s own wretchedness. It has nothing to do with other people.

I was of that mountain, the mountain that had made me. It was only as I grew older that I wondered if how I had started is how I would end—if the first shape a person takes is their only true shape.

My family was splitting down the middle—the three who had left the mountain, and the four who had stayed. The three with doctorates, and the four without high school diplomas. A chasm had appeared, and was growing.

Although I had renounced my father’s world, I had never quite found the courage to live in this one

That image of my father will always stay with me: that look on his face, of love and fear and loss

Dani

Underwhelming for the most part. Pretty interesting and doubtfully real at some points. Found myself reading diagonally some chapters. Mostly the first ones. Nice to see the world from an "uneducated" (indoctrinated) point of view. Makes you wonder.

Hayden Lussi

Jennifer

File this under “Did Not Expect the Illuminati to Show Up In This One” Wow, talk about messed up childhoods and cults. This reminded me of The Sound of Gravel (excellent book if you haven’t already read it) Shawn is the worst. And of course her dad. So messed up. Because the first part is so painful, it felt like it took forever to get through. The pace picked up during Part Two. Also, this made me think of all the women who are into essential oils now. Lol. Part Three is absolutely amazing. What a wonderful writer she is. Wow.

‘An amazing story, and truly inspiring. The kind of book everyone will enjoy. IT’S EVEN BETTER THAN YOU’VE HEARD.’ – Bill Gates Selected as a book of the year by AMAZON, THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, NEW YORK TIMES, ECONOMIST, NEW STATESMAN, VOGUE, IRISH TIMES, IRISH EXAMINER and RED MAGAZINE THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLER A Book of the Decade, 2010-2020 (Independent) ________________________ Tara Westover and her family grew up preparing for the End of Days but, according to the government, she didn’t exist. She hadn’t been registered for a birth certificate. She had no school records because she’d never set foot in a classroom, and no medical records because her father didn’t believe in hospitals. As she grew older, her father became more radical and her brother more violent. At sixteen, Tara knew she had to leave home. In doing so she discovered both the transformative power of education, and the price she had to pay for it. ________________________ · From one of TIME magazine's 100 most influential people of 2019 · Shortlisted for the 2018 BAMB Readers' Awards · Recommended as a summer read by Barack Obama, Antony Beevor, India Knight, Blake Morrison and Nina Stibbe

The international bestselling memoir

“Educated” is one of the most powerful and painful books I’ve ever read.

It’s a beautifully written memoir about a young woman raised in a radical, isolated family who teaches herself into another life—only to realize that education will cost her the people she loves most.

As Tara’s world expands, the gap between who her family insists she is and who she is becoming grows impossible to bridge.

I felt deeply sad reading this, especially when she finally accepts that to live as an educated, whole person, she has to cut ties with her father—something I understand more than I’d like to admit. It’s a book about memory, abuse, loyalty, and the terrifying freedom of choosing yourself, and it will stay with me for a long time.

"You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them. You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.”

“My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.”

Westover writes with the precision of a historian and the vulnerability of someone still making sense of what happened to her. The prose is clear, unsentimental, and yet incredibly moving—there’s no melodrama, which makes the violence and emotional manipulation land even harder.

One insight: Education here isn’t just degrees and prestige; it’s the slow, painful process of learning to trust your own mind over someone else’s version of reality. Her schooling becomes the lens through which she re-reads her childhood, her religion, and her family story—and that re-reading is as violent, in its own way, as any physical act.

Tara Westover grows up in a radical Mormon survivalist family in rural Idaho, with no formal schooling, no medical care, and a father whose paranoia and extremism shape every part of their lives.

Erwin Lemuel Oliva

“Educated” is one of the most powerful and painful books I’ve ever read.

It’s a beautifully written memoir about a young woman raised in a radical, isolated family who teaches herself into another life—only to realize that education will cost her the people she loves most.

As Tara’s world expands, the gap between who her family insists she is and who she is becoming grows impossible to bridge.

I felt deeply sad reading this, especially when she finally accepts that to live as an educated, whole person, she has to cut ties with her father—something I understand more than I’d like to admit. It’s a book about memory, abuse, loyalty, and the terrifying freedom of choosing yourself, and it will stay with me for a long time.

Some quotes that I highlighted:

"You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them. You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.”

“My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.”

The narrative voice
Westover writes with the precision of a historian and the vulnerability of someone still making sense of what happened to her. The prose is clear, unsentimental, and yet incredibly moving—there’s no melodrama, which makes the violence and emotional manipulation land even harder.


One insight: Education here isn’t just degrees and prestige; it’s the slow, painful process of learning to trust your own mind over someone else’s version of reality. Her schooling becomes the lens through which she re-reads her childhood, her religion, and her family story—and that re-reading is as violent, in its own way, as any physical act.

Tara Westover grows up in a radical Mormon survivalist family in rural Idaho, with no formal schooling, no medical care, and a father whose paranoia and extremism shape every part of their lives.

Tara Westover and her family grew up preparing for the End of Days but, according to the government, she didn’t exist. She hadn’t been registered for a birth certificate. She had no school records because she’d never set foot in a classroom, and no medical records because her father didn’t believe in hospitals.

As she grew older, her father became more radical and her brother more violent. At sixteen, Tara knew she had to leave home. In doing so she discovered both the transformative power of education, and the price she had to pay for it.
source: https://stage-www.penguin.co.uk/books/1112793/educated/9781473539075.html

Wow. What an excellent, beautifully told story of family, abuse, and eventual freedom. Such an amazingly written story that really shows the details of what it is like to be hurt and controlled by people you love. I'm not smart enough to describe all the different ways the author goes through the many phases and types of abuse happening, but it's a story in totality about being your true self. A must read!

Max Riley

Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her “head-for-the-hills” bag. In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged metal in her father’s junkyard.

Her father distrusted the medical establishment, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The 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 an older brother became violent.

When another brother got himself into college and came back with news of the world beyond the mountain, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. She taught herself enough mathematics, grammar, and science to take the ACT and was admitted to Brigham Young University. There, she studied psychology, politics, philosophy, and history, learning for the first time about pivotal world events like the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement. 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.

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty, and of the grief that comes from severing one’s closest ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one’s life through new eyes, and the will to change it.

An unexpected read - powerful, honest, and a page-turner from the very beginning

Cassandra Tang

I’ve never felt so understood by a book before. 

Olivia Rousseau 

Cannot recommend this enough. An amazing insight into a woman’s personal struggle with true knowledge and the values embedded into her by her family 

Melissa

Not my favorite, but I can appreciate the honesty that she just can't remember certain details in events. I don't enjoy this book, the setting is too far off from my familiarity, so I struggle to understand Tara.

catto fishu

This is one of my favorite books I've read this year. It purely captures the memory loss and questioning one's self that comes out of traumatic situations. The Stockholm syndrome many have in this book is unbelievable. This has well documented cases of how abusers worm their way into victim's and other's minds. Tara is so brave for writing this. She said what all survivors, of family and other types of violence, have wanted to say

Kerry McHugh West

A deep reflection on memory, identity, and our relationships with others. The book tells the story of Tara Westover, who, throughout her life, undergoes a process of distancing herself from her family and roots. It explores how, as she seeks a formal education, she faces a rupture with her past and the familiar, while redefining her own identity. Magnificent. 

Ana Collados

This is my first read this 2022 and the first time I read a non-fiction book. Reading this book made me change my perspective of a different world. I'm just proud of what she has become. The words are well-written. I may not have met her or know her but she has inspired me to keep on believing in myself.

ezra 

I used to wonder why I’d see this book all over media, libraries, bookstores, etc. but after reading it I absolutely understand why. Reaaalllyyy makes me think about all of the people in the world whose ceilings are so high but lack the means (of all sorts) to get there. Makes me think uncomfortably long about my OWN ceilings and what I can or can’t do. There’s dozens of themes in this book I could go on about but I think I’d need to write an entire textbook at this point.

Anna Oeltjenbruns

probably one of the best memoirs ive ever read - poignant, FRUSTRATING, triumphant, difficult, heart-wrenching and meaningful. i know i just dumped a bunch of adjectives but this book genuinely made me feel so much. 

ignorance is one of the most powerful things that sets humanity backwards. i know thats a debatable sentence, but i strongly believe that knowledge is power and the more we know the more we can better connect with the world around us. this book articulated the importance of knowledge in a way i've never experienced before.

tara's experiences sometimes had me on the verge of tears. there is no way i could ever understand what she went through. despite all that adversity however, she ended up in such wonderful places. this being said, she also lost a big portion of her family to the paranoia, habits, bipolar, confirmative bias of their faith.

this book was disturbing at times but through that discomfort i found a profound gratitude for my education and access to knowledge. i also found solace in what it means to be a woman, the value of money (not having to think about money) and a truly alchemist idea that if you really want to do something the whole world will conspire to help you achieve it. 

memoirs are visceral because sometimes its hard to seperate fiction from reality. but this retelling, and the nature of stories has shown me that no retelling will ever completely depict a person, or an experiment - there are only close attempts. she made a beautiful retelling that didn't feel accusatory, biased (although it always will be), or angry even to the greatest evils in her life. it felt like she was just merely articulating her inner essence in a clarity id never experienced.

so grateful to have education and to continue learning how to think for myself. i think that might just be the most important skill to have in the world.

Ashna Nirula

probably one of the best memoirs ive ever read - poignant, FRUSTRATING, triumphant, difficult, heart-wrenching and meaningful. i know i just dumped a bunch of adjectives but this book genuinely made me feel so much. 

ignorance is one of the most powerful things that sets humanity backwards. i know thats a debatable sentence, but i strongly believe that knowledge is power and the more we know the more we can better connect with the world around us. this book articulated the importance of knowledge in a way i've never experienced before.

tara's experiences sometimes had me on the verge of tears. there is no way i could ever understand what she went through. despite all that adversity however, she ended up in such wonderful places. this being said, she also lost a big portion of her family to the paranoia, habits, bipolar, confirmative bias of their faith.

this book was disturbing at times but through that discomfort i found a profound gratitude for my education and access to knowledge. i also found solace in what it means to be a woman, the value of money (not having to think about money) and a truly alchemist idea that if you really want to do something the whole world will conspire to help you achieve it. 

memoirs are visceral because sometimes its hard to seperate fiction from reality. but this retelling, and the nature of stories has shown me that no retelling will ever completely depict a person, or an experiment - there are only close attempts. she made a beautiful retelling that didn't feel accusatory, biased (although it always will be), or angry even to the greatest evils in her life. it felt like she was just merely articulating her inner essence in a clarity id never experienced.

so grateful to have education and to continue learning how to think for myself. i think that might just be the most important skill to have in the world.

Incredible story! Couldn't put the book down.

Elsa Saks

Ainsley Jeffery

I found Educated to be one of the slower memoir reads I recently can remember. A large problem I had with the text is how it seemed to jump back and forth and I found it difficult to piece together her life. Despite these minuscule issues, the story was emotional and connective. 

A big question I found myself grappling with was "what if?", what if Tara had been raised differently what if she had left sooner, what if this never happened or that never did. Of course, that's not the case and not how life plays out. "... and of all the decisions that go into making a life- the choices people make, together and on their own that combine to produce any single event."" (pp. 40) 

In all her challenges, Tara still made a life with decisions that she is proud of and that holds true meaning to her. She found her capability and put it on display. "First find out what your are capable of, then decide who you are" (pp. 230)

Matt Eaves

A lovely read. I found myself at many times thinking this was a fiction, just to stop and remember the truth behind it all. An incredible story, with many incredible takeaways.

Erin G.

For anyone who loved Jeannette Winter's memoir The Glass Castle. I kept having to remind myself that this was non-fiction. Incredible, my favourite book of 2018 so far.

Angelyn Francis

Profoundly written. Her life makes for a difficult read and leaves me with questions about how we present fact and memory in dramatic ways. But despite having those questions, this is a memoir rich with theme, reflection and thoughtfully engages with memory.

Tara’s story is heartbreaking and I have nothing but admiration for her ability to tell it with honesty and compassion. This is such a real recounting of a very special woman’s life and what education allows you to do

Daphne Li-Chen

Sanjay Krishna 

Timeo Williams

I decided to read this book following Bill Gates' flowering review.

I found the first 2/3rds if the book interesting, but for the remaining 1/3, my brain doesn't quite comprehend what Tara is thinking. This book felt more like a written statement to her family then something for the public to read. 

However, the overall narrative is good.

Educated A Memoir

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