Educated
by Tara Westover
Summary
Westover recounts growing up the youngest child of survivalist Mormon parents in rural Idaho who kept her out of school, out of hospitals, and under the sway of a father preparing for the end of the world, until she taught herself enough to enter university at seventeen. She traces her path from her family's junkyard to a doctorate at Cambridge, weighing everything her education cost her in family bonds against everything it gave her. The memoir became one of the best selling nonfiction books of its decade.
Historical Context & Significance
The 2018 Baillie Gifford Prize for nonfiction went to Serhii Plokhy's Chernobyl, and Westover's memoir was a National Book Critics Circle finalist that won neither of its categories. Its dominance of bestseller lists never translated into a major book prize.