Buy new:
$14.08$14.08
Arrives:
Friday, March 22
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
Buy used: $8.94
Other Sellers on Amazon
+ $9.26 shipping
95% positive over last 12 months
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Image Unavailable
Color:
-
-
-
- To view this video download Flash Player
-
-
-
4 VIDEOS -
Educated: A Memoir Hardcover – February 20, 2018
Purchase options and add-ons
“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
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRandom House
- Publication dateFebruary 20, 2018
- Dimensions6.47 x 1.14 x 9.52 inches
- ISBN-100099511029
- ISBN-13978-0399590504
- Lexile measure870L
Frequently bought together

Products related to this item
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.Highlighted by 29,486 Kindle readers
I had begun to understand that we had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalize others—because nurturing that discourse was easier, because retaining power always feels like the way forward.Highlighted by 26,719 Kindle readers
The skill I was learning was a crucial one, the patience to read things I could not yet understand.Highlighted by 23,730 Kindle readers
From the Publisher
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews
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
“Heart-wrenching . . . a beautiful testament to the power of education to open eyes and change lives.”—Amy Chua, The New York Times Book Review
“A coming-of-age memoir reminiscent of The Glass Castle.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
“Westover’s one-of-a-kind memoir is about the shaping of a mind. . . . In briskly paced prose, she evokes a childhood that completely defined her. Yet it was also, she gradually sensed, deforming her.”—The Atlantic
“Tara Westover is living proof that some people are flat-out, boots-always-laced-up indomitable. Her new book, Educated, is a heartbreaking, heartwarming, best-in-years memoir about striding beyond the limitations of birth and environment into a better life. . . . ★★★★ out of four.”—USA Today
“[Educated] left me speechless with wonder. [Westover’s] lyrical prose is mesmerizing, as is her personal story, growing up in a family in which girls were supposed to aspire only to become wives—and in which coveting an education was considered sinful. Her journey will surprise and inspire men and women alike.”—Refinery29
“Riveting . . . Westover brings readers deep into this world, a milieu usually hidden from outsiders. . . . Her story is remarkable, as each extreme anecdote described in tidy prose attests.”—The Economist
“A subtle, nuanced study of how dysfunction of any kind can be normalized even within the most conventional family structure, and of the damage such containment can do.”—Financial Times
“Whether narrating scenes of fury and violence or evoking rural landscapes or tortured self-analysis, Westover writes with uncommon intelligence and grace. . . . One of the most improbable and fascinating journeys I’ve read in recent years.”—Newsday
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
I’m standing on the red railway car that sits abandoned next to the barn. The wind soars, whipping my hair across my face and pushing a chill down the open neck of my shirt. The gales are strong this close to the mountain, as if the peak itself is exhaling. Down below, the valley is peaceful, undisturbed. Meanwhile our farm dances: the heavy conifer trees sway slowly, while the sagebrush and thistles quiver, bowing before every puff and pocket of air. Behind me a gentle hill slopes upward and stitches itself to the mountain base. If I look up, I can see the dark form of the Indian Princess.
The hill is paved with wild wheat. If the conifers and sagebrush are soloists, the wheat field is a corps de ballet, each stem following all the rest in bursts of movement, a million ballerinas bending, one after the other, as great gales dent their golden heads. The shape of that dent lasts only a moment, and is as close as anyone gets to seeing wind.
Turning toward our house on the hillside, I see movements of a different kind, tall shadows stiffly pushing through the currents. My brothers are awake, testing the weather. I imagine my mother at the stove, hovering over bran pancakes. I picture my father hunched by the back door, lacing his steel-toed boots and threading his callused hands into welding gloves. On the highway below, the school bus rolls past without stopping.
I am only seven, but I understand that it is this fact, more than any other, that makes my family different: we don’t go to school.
Dad worries that the Government will force us to go but it can’t, because it doesn’t know about us. Four of my parents’ seven children don’t have birth certificates. We have no medical records because we were born at home and have never seen a doctor or nurse.* We have no school records because we’ve never set foot in a classroom. When I am nine, I will be issued a Delayed Certificate of Birth, but at this moment, according to the state of Idaho and the federal government, I do not exist.
Of course I did exist. I had grown up preparing for the Days of Abomination, watching for the sun to darken, for the moon to drip as if with blood. I spent my summers bottling peaches and my winters rotating supplies. When the World of Men failed, my family would continue on, unaffected.
I had been educated in the rhythms of the mountain, rhythms in which change was never fundamental, only cyclical. The same sun appeared each morning, swept over the valley and dropped behind the peak. The snows that fell in winter always melted in the spring. Our lives were a cycle—the cycle of the day, the cycle of the seasons—circles of perpetual change that, when complete, meant nothing had changed at all. I believed my family was a part of this immortal pattern, that we were, in some sense, eternal. But eternity belonged only to the mountain.
There’s a story my father used to tell about the peak. She was a grand old thing, a cathedral of a mountain. The range had other mountains, taller, more imposing, but Buck’s Peak was the most finely crafted. Its base spanned a mile, its dark form swelling out of the earth and rising into a flawless spire. From a distance, you could see the impression of a woman’s body on the mountain face: her legs formed of huge ravines, her hair a spray of pines fanning over the northern ridge. Her stance was commanding, one leg thrust forward in a powerful movement, more stride than step.
My father called her the Indian Princess. She emerged each year when the snows began to melt, facing south, watching the buffalo return to the valley. Dad said the nomadic Indians had watched for her appearance as a sign of spring, a signal the mountain was thawing, winter was over, and it was time to come home.
All my father’s stories were about our mountain, our valley, our jagged little patch of Idaho. He never told me what to do if I left the mountain, if I crossed oceans and continents and found myself in strange terrain, where I could no longer search the horizon for the Princess. He never told me how I’d know when it was time to come home.
*Except for my sister Audrey, who broke both an arm and a leg when she was young. She was taken to get a cast.
Product details
- ASIN : 0399590501
- Publisher : Random House; First Edition (February 20, 2018)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0099511029
- ISBN-13 : 978-0399590504
- Lexile measure : 870L
- Item Weight : 1.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.47 x 1.14 x 9.52 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #6,655 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #18 in Religious Leader Biographies
- #78 in Women's Biographies
- #284 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
Videos
Videos for this product

1:19
Click to play video

Educated: Overcoming Adversity and Finding One's Own Path
Ana Jo

Videos for this product

1:01
Click to play video

Watch to the end Educated A Memoir by Tara Westover
NL_Hok Reviews

Videos for this product

0:41
Click to play video

Educated: A Memoir
Amazon Videos
Important information
To report an issue with this product or seller, click here.
About the author

Tara Westover is an American author living in the UK. Born in Idaho to a father opposed to public education, she never attended school. She spent her days working in her father's junkyard or stewing herbs for her mother, a self-taught herbalist and midwife. She was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom, and after that first taste, she pursued learning for a decade. She graduated magna cum laude from Brigham Young University in 2008 and was subsequently awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She earned an MPhil from Trinity College, Cambridge in 2009, and in 2010 was a visiting fellow at Harvard University. She returned to Cambridge, where she was awarded a PhD in history in 2014.
Related products with free delivery on eligible orders Sponsored | Try Prime for unlimited fast, free shipping
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviews with images
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Her father could well have presented himself as being the divine reincarnation of one of the original Morman founding fathers. He believes in hard work, perseverance, and self-determination. He demonstrates time and time again how powerfully influential and independent-minded he can be, because his faith in God is strong. In the real world, he operates a scrap metal recycling facility on his property, and his children help in the business.
Her mother stands by him throughout all of their ordeals, trials, and tribulations. She accepts the fact that he has the final word in most matters, but she shows that she can be very practical and wise in her own right. For instance, she is knowledgeable and highly skilled in producing herbal remedies and dispensing homeopathic medicine, which is great a benefit to her family, friends, and neighbors. Thus, she provides the family with an extra source of income.
You might be tempted to say the family has "six hungry kids and a crop in the fields," to quote a Kenny Rogers song, because their predicament looks terribly dismal, as they find themselves in dire straits time and time again. But they prove to be more the exception rather than the rule. True, theirs is a devout, outspoken, and righteous pioneering family. We know that some members of the family may tend to behave in a potentially violent manner and can be downright dangerous if provoked. Still, they are intelligent, sentient beings and God-fearing. So, they do have above average economic prospects and a bright future in front of them. There's no need to call in Billy Jack, Buford Pusser, Raylan Givens, or Efrem Zimbalist Jr., the guru, sheriff, marshal, or FBI right away. Perhaps health and human services.
Nevertheless, the family drives Tara away to college, so that she may improve her chances for living a fruitful and fully productive life among those of her ever-expanding social peer groups, although some may repudiate her secular choices and are repelled and repulsed by many of her liberal beliefs. Thus, she has a tough time reconciling the extremely tenacious tendencies of certain members of the family whose behavior is "meaner than a junkyard dog," to quote a Jim Croce song. At any rate, she does need to assert herself more and get over her shyness and personal inhibitions. She should go out into the world and realize her full potential. On the flip side, she needs to accept people more for who and what they are.
Years later, she thinks the family squabbling has to stop. She has pushed herself to the limit trying to succeed in college. She hits the pause and reset buttons, and goes in for counselling, before she can resume her studies. I think, she may have experienced an epiphany or two along the way, but the divine revelations keep coming, leaving us ordinary wee folks baffled, confused, disoriented, perplexed, but amazed. There's more to her story than meets the eye.
I reflect on another story I heard about a young family staying at Sealy's Motel and Trailer Park in Altura, Colorado during the summer of 1963, where the eldest son goes out to play and meets a contentious play-fort builder and dirt-clod thrower about his own age, eight or nine. The new acquaintance has a furry racoon-skin cap on, buck teeth like a beaver, wears wire-rimmed eyeglasses and is ready to do battle at any given moment. His plywood fort is situated on one side of a vacant trailer lot with the presumed enemy's built on the opposite side. He has meatball sized dirt-clods stacked like a pyramid of cannon balls in defense of his position, behind a rock wall. Snowballs could be stacked there in the winter, if necessary. He expects an enemy to show up at any moment. To my knowledge, one never did.
In search of further adventure or some other form of mischief, "Dennis the Menace" returns to the motel section of the park. The Lady in Waiting's front door is open to her apartment, he notices, as he casually strolls by. A securely latched screen door does not prevent or deter him in the least from maliciously seizing two handfuls of dry, finely powdered dirt from the driveway, and tossing it into the room through the screen-wire, onto the polished linoleum floor. Too late to run, he inevitably gets caught. The occupant appears on the scene immediately and invites him inside with the noble intention of making amends. She wants him to apologize and clean up the mess he's created. A broom and dustpan are generously provided. He's learned his lesson well that day.
Years later, Dennis is 33 years old and still living with his parents in their big, roomy, wooden frame house, when his father subtly inquires, "Have you thought about finding another place to live? We wouldn't want to cramp your style."
The question jogs the young man's memory, jolts him up off the sofa, and propels him into taking an evasive action. Yet in denial, he soon lands a well-paying job, borrows enough money from the bank to get there, and promptly moves to Florida to begin work. Problem solved.
More recently, Dennis is at work in his newly chosen career field discussing business matters with his colleagues. He's much older now and has to admit that "when I was a young man, I could get by with blaming all of my problems and personal issues on my negligent, abusive, cruel, and uncaring parents, but now that I am 45 years old, free and totally independent, I would sound utterly ridiculous blaming the parents for my problems in life."
Last week, Dennis was thinking over what the Lady at the Barbeque Stand told him after expressing his sincere appreciation of the extra measure of kindness she displayed, for the delicious take-out food she had meticulously prepared for him, which he in turn had promptly delivered to his sister's house for the traditional family get-together. He was supposed to bring a dish.
"I bet you've made Thanksgiving possible for countless others in town besides me!" he stated plainly.
"Sure, take all of your holiday stress and put it on us!" she declared, flatly.
He didn't think that she was acting out or demonstrating certain bi-polar tendencies. She'd only said what was on her mind. He smiles, remembering being just as pleased as punch with the turkey submarine sandwich and a bottle of Bubble-up carbonated beverage from the convenience store that he had consumed at the beach soaking up sunshine and watching the waves roll in, the year prior. It was good to be home again.
"Thanks for shopping locally!" she added, quickly recanting.
There are so many psychological and religious issues in this story that I can relate to on so many levels from my own personal experience. Although, I grew up Mennonite and not Mormon and the religious beliefs are different, the cultural dynamics are similar.
First, Tara grows up in a family were the father is the ruler and women are seen as needing to always be submissive to men. This is a standard Mormon belief as well as one of many evangelical Christians, but her father uses that belief to control and to manipulate his family into a separate kind of lifestyle ruled by paranoia of everything “out there”, religious superiority, and an expectation of family loyalty. He does this through demanding an adherence to a distorted preaching of his faith as the one and true faith, by shaming his children if they so much as show any interest in how others live and attempt to copy that behavior. I couldn’t help but make that connection to my own father. Though my father was not nearly as off-center as Mr. Westover, I recognized the same behavior from my childhood. The result is the child feels alone and unable to connect with anyone often for life.
Tara finds herself alienated from everyone in her world except her family. She sits alone in Sunday School and of course, she has no friends for two reasons. She feels different from everyone else and her father makes sure that she has no time or opportunity to cultivate friendships with others. He stresses that girls she meets are not good enough for her. Her father uses his faith to condemn them as not living the way a person of God should live. She, therefore, feels guilty for even wanting to associate with such “wicked” people.
Tara, even after she leaves home and goes to college, finds herself unable to fit in and at odds with pretty much everyone. I don’t think she, for many years, recognizes that this is a result of the socialization or lack thereof from her home life. It is deeply and complexly rooted in the emotional, psychological, religious, and cultural dynamics of her early years. I find it interesting that she titles the book, “Educated,” as if obtaining an education is what moves her to a place in society that she is accepted as “normal” by others. The lack of education is a handicap and with certainty will keep her a captive in her father’s strange world, but it is not what makes her feel alone, strange, and like she doesn’t belong in the new world that she explores. Getting educated will not fix what is broken inside of her from her childhood. It only gives her a better platform from which the self can say, “Now I am somebody.” I did the same thing. I went to school and got a master’s degree and a job that is viewed with respect and awe. And while working in it, I feel strong, accepted, and like I have worth. But outside of it, I still feel friendless and different from everyone else. I watch Tara as the story progresses feeling this total alienation from others and struggling with it. From my own experience, I have learned the feeling never goes away. One simply has to learn to be comfortable with being alone and knowing that this is who I am.
A part of her psychic also does the same thing that I did with my family even after leaving. It longs for the love of one’s parents and siblings. Tara, like me, keeps coming back to the family trying to convince them of reality and what is right. Even though on a logical level, one comes to understand that one’s family is mentally unhealthy, there is this deep seated needed to stay connected to them. Afterall, if those who bore you and nurtured you in childhood don’t love you, then why would anyone else especially God. Tara loses herself and becomes mentally unstable for a year after she realizes that her family does not want to know the truth that one son has been viciously abusing other members. Her parents are not interested in addressing the problems in the family and the highest value of loyalty makes everyone choose to accept “the delusion that they are one big happy family” which will allow them to remain part of the family. Tara realizes that the family “truth” and loyalty are more important than loving her. This is devastating to her.
What really destroys her is that her mother betrays her in this battle to expose evil. Her mother one minute acknowledges to Tara that she knows about and will speak to her father about Shawn’s unacceptable behavior. But when there is an actual confrontation, her mother turns against her and sides with her father. Her mother tries to destroy Tara’s reputation and character. For the mother to stand against the patriarch of the family requires too high of a price. It reminds me so much of my own mother who swung from seemingly being rational to total denial and perpetrating vicious attacks on my character. It leaves one very confused and in the case of Tara, she cannot concentrate enough to even study. She falls into a deep depression. She had this deep-seated hope that her family would change because of her speaking the truth. But her family, like mine, was incapable of changing. Denial is a powerful substance that keeps the system stable no matter how dysfunctional. Only the individual has the power to change and often doesn’t because of these pressures from different aspects of society to conform, especially the family of origin and one’s religious community.
If you enjoy exploring the complex dynamics of families, “Educated” is a compelling read. My books “If You Leave This Farm” and “No Longer a Child of Promise” also explore many of the same dynamics. My third book, “Once An Insider, Now Without a Church Home” explores the same dynamics and pressures within the evangelical church as found within the family. One is only a friend and a member as long as one follows the dictated expected behavior and norms.
I appreciate all those who have the courage to write their stories. It helps me to know that I am really not alone and that I don’t need to be ashamed to share my own story.
Top reviews from other countries
It conjures up so many emotions, it’s like a whirlwind at times. I enjoyed it, thoroughly!
⭐️ My absolute favourite book. It's always the first book I read at the beginning of the year.
Quite a few of the reviews I have read doubt Tara’s story – I do not. Nigella Lawson did not believe it all but changed her mind when listening to the audiobook version.
It is true that the brain’s plasticity means individuals may have different memories of events. Certainly, Tara accepts and alludes to that. Her journals, which bore pictures of Jesus until she was about 17, after which they were simply black, are written records of how she felt at particular times in her life. Along with assorted emails they are what we might call the ‘evidence’ that she will have shared with her editors. All books are supposed to be given the once over by a lawyer to avoid untruths in any case.
I think that religion – any sort – in the wrong hands, easily morphs into a powerful method of control, and often that control is used to subdue other people in their orbit, including a spouse and children.
Tara’s mother, Laree, has gone on to publish her own version of events in “Educating” and her essential oils company, “Butterfly Express”, has made them a great deal of money despite the hate emails they received when Tara’s book was first published. Val’s conviction that the Days of Abomination would arrive with the year 2000 was shown to be a lie and seemed to exacerbate his lack of safety in the scrapyard. He was always pushing things, playing with fire – literally. But the wounds carried by some of his children are more than flesh deep.
Tara’s parents will never admit their faults. Tara will never again return to their strange beliefs and lifestyle. Yet, she was able to perform on stage and sing beautifully despite conditions at home – in many ways these were the first examples of her escaping the family, living for a short time in another world where there could be happy endings, a world where bad people got their comeuppance.
The book is well written but the main text never achieves the wonderful level of the lyrical prose in the Prologue:
…”the wheat field is a corps de ballet, each stem following the rest in bursts of movement, a million ballerinas bending, one after the other, as great gales dent their golden heads. The shape of that dent lasts only a moment, and is as close as anyone gets to seeing wind”.
























