Books · Lisanne Swart

All Books by Tara Westover

Tara Westover grew up in rural Idaho without a birth certificate, a doctor, or a single day of school. Her father did not believe in any of it. She taught herself enough to get into Brigham Young University, then Harvard, then Cambridge, where she earned a PhD in intellectual history in 2014. She has published one book. It spent more than 100 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It is not a book about success. It is a book about the cost of becoming someone your family no longer recognizes, and whether that price was worth paying.

By Lisanne Swart · 1 book · Memoir · Updated June 2026

01

Memoir

Educated

Tara Westover · 2018 · Random House · 352 pages

Westover was the youngest of seven children in a family that lived off the grid in the mountains of Idaho. Her father stockpiled fuel and weapons for the End of Days. Her mother was a self-taught herbalist and midwife. None of the children had birth certificates. None of them went to school. Westover worked in her father’s junkyard, assisted at home births, and treated injuries with herbal poultices. When her brother’s violence escalated and her family refused to see it, she began teaching herself. She learned enough grammar and mathematics to sit the ACT, gained admission to Brigham Young University, and from there won a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She graduated with a PhD in intellectual history in 2014. The book she wrote about all of it became one of the most widely read memoirs of the century.

What makes Educated unlike most memoirs about difficult childhoods is its refusal to be simple about them. Westover does not write her parents as monsters. She writes them as people she loved, whose world made sense to them — and whose world she had to leave anyway. The grief and the freedom arrive together, and she does not try to resolve the contradiction. That is what stays with you.

Read my full review →

Watch

Tara Westover on Super Soul Sunday

Oprah Winfrey interviews Westover about Educated, her childhood, and what it cost her to tell the truth — Super Soul Sunday, Season 9 Episode 6.

Frequently asked questions about Tara Westover

How many books has Tara Westover written?

Tara Westover has written one book: Educated, a memoir published in February 2018 by Random House. It spent more than 100 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and won multiple awards, including the Alex Award from the American Library Association and the Goodreads Choice Award for Autobiography. As of 2026, no second book has been announced.

Is Educated by Tara Westover a true story?

Yes. Educated is a memoir — a first-person account of Westover’s own life. She was born in 1986 in Clifton, Idaho, to a survivalist family that rejected formal education, hospitals, and government. She never attended school as a child and did not have a birth certificate until she was nine years old. She taught herself enough to gain admission to Brigham Young University, where she graduated magna cum laude, before earning a PhD in intellectual history from Cambridge University in 2014. Some members of her family have disputed elements of her account.

What is Educated by Tara Westover about?

Educated is the story of Westover’s childhood in a survivalist, fundamentalist Mormon family in rural Idaho — a world without schools, doctors, or contact with the outside world — and her slow, self-directed effort to gain an education. It is about the transformative and destructive effects of that education: how it opened the world to her and closed her family to her. The abuse she documents, largely at the hands of an older brother, is a central part of the story, as is her family’s refusal to acknowledge it. It is a book about knowledge, identity, and the price of becoming someone your family no longer recognizes.

Will Tara Westover write another book?

As of June 2026, Tara Westover has not published a second book and has not announced one publicly. She continues to speak on education, civil discourse, and intellectual history, and has written occasional essays and pieces for publications including the New York Times. Whether she will write another book — and what form it might take — remains an open question.

What should I read after Educated?

The most widely recommended book after Educated is The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls — a memoir with similar themes of chaotic, ideologically driven parents and the work of building a life beyond them. Other strong choices are Wild by Cheryl Strayed, Becoming by Michelle Obama, and The Last Days by Ali Millar, which is the closest structural parallel Educated has in contemporary memoir.

“You could call it the making of me.” — Tara Westover, Educated

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