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Educated: A Memoir
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Original price was: $18.99.$11.79Current price is: $11.79.
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#1 NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER • One of the most acclaimed books of our time: an unforgettable memoir about a young woman who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University
“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
“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
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Product name:
Educated: A Memoir
Price:
Original price was: $18.99.$11.79Current price is: $11.79.
Amazon Customer –
The book is a little heavy and uninteresting to begin with and doesn’t hook you instantly, but when it does, oh my god, believe me when I say this, if you read it a little each day and let the words get absorbed in you, you’ll find pure bliss. The details in this book has amazed me, disgusted me and overpowered me through the span of these 2 months. Nothing here looked superficial, everything was very raw, human like and that’s what made it special. The art of storytelling is an amazing thing, it quite makes or breaks the experience of readers. I would indeed say, this was possibly the best book I’ve read in my entire life till now, (that includes all the mind boggling non-fiction novels too). Being a PhD student myself, was the reason I picked up this book, but when I finished it, I would understand the real value of ‘Education’ in life. How it changes a person, like really the ‘self’ of that person. It’s like-‘At most, there are 2 persons living inside this body, with one fractured mind. When it was time, she left, she stayed in the mirror. The incidents, decisions that followed were entirely mine, not hers anymore.’
B-mom –
Had a client lend this to me after chatting about finding the right book to kick start me back to reading and at first I felt pressured to appease her BUT I couldn’t put it down. It was sooooo beautifully written and a definite rise above memoir. There are some hard parts to digest due to the nature of the book but I loved it so much I gifted TWO!
Constant Reader –
Tara Westover is the youngest child of survivalist, fundamentalist, parents. It would be inaccurate to say that she was home-schooled since there was no effort at home to educate the children beyond teaching them to read. There was access to a very limited supply of books and most of the children were self-taught. The education provided by her parents was more an indoctrination into the father’s paranoid view of the world and his condemnation of any actions that did not conform to his rigid interpretation of Mormonism. Her story is harrowing, compelling, redemptive, and believable. It is so compelling and so fluently written that it was impossible to put down. This book was a selection for our book group and it lead to a very interesting discussion. The discussion covered the immediate topics of emotional abuse, physical abuse, mental health, religious extremism, political extremism, education, and families. Our discussion also covered more wide ranging issues such as how we are failing children who are removed from society, school, and view. We want to believe that parents should be able to love and care for their children without interference, but we know that not all parents will keep their children safe or provide what the children will need to fully function in this world. Tara deserved better, those children who were driven off a cliff deserved better, and there are thousands of invisible children who still deserve better. There are also very perceptive aspects of the book dealing with the role of women, and some scholarly discussion of the issue. Tara had to struggle to find her role as a woman after growing up in an environment where women are meant to be obedient and submissive. When she went to Brigham Young, she intended to study music so that she could lead a church choir. It sounded like an acceptable role for a woman to her. When her world opened, not only did she have no idea of her abilities, she began to reconsider her choices. At one point, she spoke with to a male student who was from a more mainstream Mormon family and applying to law school. She asked him if he would study law if he were a woman. He replied, “If I were a woman, I wouldn’t want to study it.” The conversation went downhill from there as he continued to insist that women are made differently and should only aspire to care for their children. Downhill again it went when he concluded that if he were a woman and wanted to study law, “I’d know something was wrong with me.” This thinking is not historic thinking, it was contemporaneous thinking. It was an enormous step for her to leave the mountain for the first time and she faced enormous objective challenges in both school work and personal behaviors. How heartbreaking is it that even after learning to succeed at the university, there were powerful forces at work to make her ”know her place” and stifle her basic right to be an adult in modern society? Fortunately, not everyone at the university shared that view of gender inequality and she received encouragement and sponsorship to go to Cambridge University. Tara Westover’s story is compelling. There are some who will read it and see elements of their lives and feel that they are not alone and perhaps encouraged that things can get better. Many of us will read it and wish that our parents were still alive so that we could call them and tell them thank you one more time for the loving, safe, environment that we took for granted. Her writing skills are extraordinary. She is an exceptionally perceptive person and she is able to express those perceptions in a way that helps the reader fully understand her thought processes. She is not just throwing out conclusions, indictments, or diagnoses. Her thoughts are worth reading, pondering, and remembering.
Amazon Customer –
I’d had this book sitting on my shelf for a while – it had been recommended in many articles so I had high expectations.
The book was first published in 2018, it has 377 pages and 40 chapters. First impression is good as there are some top quality quotes of praise at the start.
I hadn’t appreciated that so much of the book would be about the author’s childhood. Her education at home was very limited and she describes the varying levels of work she had to do to survive.
The writing is engaging and the reader is encouraged to care about Tara. The narrative is first person so is very personal – you can’t help but feel her experiences with her.
Alongside the straightforward narrative. the reader has to look behind the writing as the motives and emotions are a huge part of this story. Tara rarely judges and simply accepts most of her life – it’s the reader who is given the space to analyse and has time to stand back to get the full picture.
Tara’s life is hard to comprehend – she tells us about it sensitivity yet managing to retain a disconnect that appears to be her coping mechanism. She thought that everything was normal and that there were no options. Its inspiring to read about her small moments of realisation when she starts to acknowledge what is happening, accepts them as wrong and starts to consider alternatives. I was surprised there wasn’t one big moment of rebellion away from her world but just small movements and tiny mind shifts until one day she found she had gone far enough mentally not to have to go back. This multitude of tiny steps are almost imperceptible until she learns to believe in herself – this creates a wave of emotion for the reader and it can be seen how life changing the process was for Tara.
Brilliant account of a life turning towards the world rather than running away from it.
This is all well written as a retrospective account and it is as I would normally expect a memoir to be – evenly paced and with a consistent tone. This book seems to do so much more though – at the start the narrative is naïve and basic, as the author grows the phrasing becomes more confident and articulate. This development is cleverly written.
Omega –
A memoir written in the most honest way I have ever seen, touching and unforgettable. Thank you Tara, God bless you 🙏🏼
FilmMuse6 –
There are two types of popular books, one is the kind that gets a lot of hype and fanfare and sits on bestseller lists for months but ultimately falls short of all the acclaim. Second is the kind that simply lives up to your greatest expectations — even if you were skeptical of all the aforementioned hype and fanfare to begin with. Educated is solidly, well written and exquisitely told story of survival and ultimately, success. I was skeptical because Educated stares at me from The New York Times, week after week on the bestseller list—everyone seems to have either heard of it, has read it or wants to read it. How can it be that good? Or is it just good, in the common mainstream way that some books are? But Tara Westover has written a powerful and heart-searing story about the abuse and dysfunction she experienced growing up with her wildly eccentric and religious family. Her upbringing is a far cry from what a normal childhood looks like; Tara never went to public schools and yet managed to study at Cambridge and complete her PHD at Harvard. Who wouldn’t want such a success story? But more on that in a moment.
Tara Westover’s emotional story broke my heart even as she tells it in a very matter of fact style. She’s raw and honest about her own self and shortcomings, she turns the lens on herself many times in the book, shining a light on her own bad behaviors and choices. Her story is shocking, infuriating and at times just plain, disturbing, but I couldn’t stop reading it. I didn’t feel it was redundant at all, although you can say, many of the same bad things happen to her over and over again; car accidents, freak accidents in the junkyard, physical and verbal abuse from her older brother and worst of all, the sheer lack of protection she had from her parents. The hardest thing to grasp about Tara’s story is how easily her parents did not protect her from so much, time and time again. To come from all that and to be as articulate as she is and as grounded as she seems is astonishing. Just pull up an interview of Tara Westover talking to Oprah or Ellen DeGeneres and you’ll find yourself thinking what a lovely person she appears to be. She doesn’t seem fueled with anger or overcome with emotion, she holds herself upright gracefully and tells her truth, straight. She doesn’t even talk badly about all of the ones who have hurt her so deeply. I believe that is a testament to who Tara Westover is as a person.
As far as her education, I read the many naysayer comments barking about her “too good to be true” Ivy League education and dismissing or denying how she could have not gone to public school and gotten a high school education before going off to these colleges based on what little education and home schooling she did have. I admit, it does sound too good to be true…but in some cases, some people just have what it takes; the talent, the brains, the drive and determination and the luck to get far in life. I think Tara always had it in her and the people who met her, the bishop and the professors who supported and encouraged her, felt very strongly about what Tara was capable of and I think they helped her as much as they could along the way. I think they wrote recommendation letters, persuaded her numerous times to apply for grants and funding and to take her knowledge as far as it could go. I think it was easy to see in Tara, a success story of sorts. She’s someone who transformed themselves into who she was meant to be, someone who could change her life (if not her story or her past) and transcend even her wildest dreams. I admire Tara and her success and applaud her for telling such a raw story—even if it meant risking estrangement from the people she loves.
Tara Westover has written a brilliant story and proves what a good writer she is. A good story in the hands of a bad writer would not end up being as beloved and popular as Educated is. As far as I can see, she was meant to have all her success.
Renata –
A primeira frase já alerta para um livro extremamente bem escrito. Com o passar dos capítulos, o livro se expande. Além da escrita maravilhosa da autora, aprendemos sobre a sua vida: que história forre e comovente. Ao final, a admiração pela autora e sua coragem em escrever este livro dominaram, não queria parar de ler. Foi uma ótima dica que peguei por acaso na newsletter do Bill Gates.