University Wide -- SHSU Common Reader 2019: Educated: About the Author & Book

New York Times Book Review

She Didn’t Own a Birth Certificate or Go to School. Yet She Went On to Earn a Ph.D.

"It is only when the final, wrenching break from most of her family arrives that one realizes just how courageous this testimonial really is. These disclosures will take a toll. But one is also left convinced that the costs are worth it. By the end, Westover has somehow managed not only to capture her unsurpassably exceptional upbringing, but to make her current situation seem not so exceptional at all, and resonant for many others."

The Atlantic

One-of-a-Kind Memoir 

"Westover's one-of-a-kind memoir is about the shaping of a mind." 

USA Today

Inspiring Story of a Young Woman Determined to Learn

"Educated is a heartbreaking, heartwarming, best-in-years memoir about striding beyond the limitations of birth and environment and into a better life." ★★★★ of four.

The Economist

A Riveting Memoir

"Her story is remarkable, as each extreme anecdote described in tidy prose attests...All the same, readers who enjoyed more mundane backgrounds will empathize. The central tension she wrestles with throughout her book is how to be true to herself without alienating her family. Her upbringing was extraordinary, but that struggle is not." 

The Irish Times

An Extraordinary Upbringing Recounted with Evocative Lyricism

"She recounts her experiences with a matter-of-fact lyricism that is extraordinarily evocative, and which makes the emotional impact of the inevitable rift between herself and some members of her family even more powerful. Educated reminds us that education doesn’t just mean learning about history and science and art. It means learning how to think for oneself."

Publishers Weekly

Starred Review of Educated

"Westover’s vivid prose makes this saga of the pressures of conformity and self-assertion that warp a family seem both terrifying and ordinary. "

• PBS Interview Video (6:13)
• CBS This Morning Video (6:41)

  Tara Westover's journey from off-the-grid childhood to Cambridge
• Gates/Cambridge Video (58:25)

  Gates Cambridge Scholar Tara Westover is interviewed on her book Educated.
• C-SPAN Video (17:50)
• 5x15 Stories Video (6:19)

• 'Educated' should be read with grain of salt, says family's attorney

Now Read This

• One of the New York Times's 10 Best Books of 2018
• Long-listed for the Carnegie Medal of Excellence
• Alex Award from the American Library Association
• Amazon Editors’ pick for the Best Book of 2018
• Hudson Group Best Book of the Year
• President Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of the Year list
• Bill Gates’s Holiday Reading list