Tara Westover Books in Order: Complete Reading Guide

Tara Westover grew up in a survivalist family in rural Idaho, was not formally educated until she taught herself enough to pass the ACT college entrance exam at seventeen, and went on to earn a PhD from Cambridge. Her memoir about this path — Educated — became one of the most-discussed books of 2018 and has sold millions of copies.

Tara Westover’s Only Book

1. Educated — 2018

The memoir of a woman who grew up without formal education in a family that refused government institutions — school, hospitals, identity documents — and found her way to Cambridge. One of the most compelling accounts of self-determination in American memoir, and a serious examination of family loyalty and its limits.

➡ Full review → | Buy on Amazon →

What to Read After Educated

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls — A memoir about growing up with unconventional, neglectful parents who saw themselves as free spirits — the most direct comparison to Educated in terms of subject matter and emotional terrain.

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance — Another memoir about escaping a specific American subculture through education, with significant political resonance.

The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr — A memoir of a chaotic Texas childhood that reads as precise literature, by one of the best prose stylists in American non-fiction.

Becoming by Michelle Obama — A memoir about education as the mechanism of transformation — Obama’s account of her own path from Chicago’s South Side through Princeton and Harvard Law School.

A Memoir of Self-Invention

Tara Westover’s Educated is one of the most celebrated memoirs of recent years, the account of an extraordinary journey of self-invention, from a childhood almost entirely outside the institutions of mainstream society to the heights of formal education. Westover grew up in a survivalist family in rural Idaho, isolated from mainstream society, without formal schooling, and shaped by a fundamentalist worldview that kept her apart from the institutions and assumptions of the wider world. From these beginnings, with no formal education in childhood, she undertook a remarkable journey of self-invention, teaching herself enough to enter university and ultimately attaining the highest levels of formal education, a transformation so dramatic as to seem almost incredible. Educated is the account of this extraordinary journey, the passage from an isolated and unschooled childhood to the heights of formal education, and the profound transformation of self that this journey entailed. The memoir’s power lies in the dramatic arc of this self-invention, the passage from one world to another so different as to be nearly unrecognizable, and the immense personal cost and difficulty of the transformation. For readers, Educated offers the compelling account of an extraordinary journey of self-invention, from an isolated and unschooled childhood to the heights of formal education, rendered with insight and power. A memoir of self-invention, Educated recounts Tara Westover’s extraordinary journey from a survivalist childhood in rural Idaho, without formal schooling, to the heights of formal education, and the profound transformation of self that this remarkable passage entailed.

The Transformative Power of Education

At the heart of Educated, as its title declares, is a profound meditation on the transformative power of education, on the way that learning can remake a person, opening new worlds, transforming understanding, and enabling a self-invention that would otherwise be impossible. Westover’s memoir is, above all, a testament to what education can do, for it was through education that she transformed herself, escaped the limitations of her isolated upbringing, and remade her understanding of the world and herself. The memoir explores the transformative power of education in its fullest sense, not merely the acquisition of knowledge but the profound remaking of the self, the opening of new worlds and possibilities, the development of the capacity for independent thought, and the painful but liberating transformation of understanding that education made possible. Education, in Westover’s account, is a force of liberation and self-creation, the means by which she remade herself and escaped the constraints of her upbringing, but it is also a source of profound difficulty and loss, for the transformation it enabled came at great personal cost, including estrangement from the world and the family of her childhood. This meditation on the transformative power of education, in all its liberating force and its painful cost, is at the heart of the memoir and the source of its deepest resonance, for it illuminates what education can do to remake a person and a life. For readers, Educated offers a profound meditation on the transformative power of education, the way that learning can remake a person and a life, rendered through Westover’s own extraordinary experience. The transformative power of education is the deep subject of Educated, which explores how learning remade Westover’s understanding and her self, enabling her extraordinary journey of self-invention while exacting a profound personal cost.

Memory, Truth, and Telling One’s Story

A dimension of Educated that gives it particular depth is its thoughtful engagement with the nature of memory and truth, with the difficulty of telling one’s own story honestly, and with the way that different people may remember and understand the same events in profoundly different ways. Westover’s memoir is notably reflective about the difficulty of its own undertaking, about the unreliability of memory, the partiality of any single perspective, and the challenge of telling the truth about a contested past. She is careful and honest about the limits of her own memory and perspective, acknowledging where her recollections are uncertain, where others remember events differently, and where the truth is genuinely contested, and this thoughtful engagement with the nature of memory and truth gives the memoir a depth and an integrity beyond mere recollection. The memoir reckons with the reality that a life, especially one marked by conflict and estrangement, is remembered and understood differently by the different people who lived it, and that the writing of a memoir involves the difficult work of telling one’s own truth while acknowledging the partiality of any single perspective. This reflective engagement with memory, truth, and the difficulty of telling one’s own story is among the most thoughtful dimensions of the memoir, lending it an honesty and a depth that distinguish it from less reflective accounts. For readers, this engagement adds depth and integrity to Educated, the thoughtful reckoning with the nature of memory and truth and the difficulty of telling one’s own story honestly. Memory, truth, and telling one’s story are thoughtfully engaged in Educated, which reckons honestly with the unreliability of memory, the partiality of perspective, and the difficulty of telling the truth about a contested past, lending the memoir a depth and integrity beyond mere recollection.

Westover and Her Family

Educated is notable for its careful treatment of the ethical problem it poses: Westover is writing about living people — her parents, her siblings — who have not consented to the characterisations. Some family members, including her parents and one brother, have publicly disputed her account. Westover addresses this directly in the book, acknowledging that memory is unreliable and that her account is hers, not the definitive record. The disclaimer is honest and appropriate; readers should hold it alongside the memoir itself.

Affiliate disclosure: Links to Amazon on this page are affiliate links. We earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.