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Educated by Tara Westover review – escape from a Mormon fundamentalist family

W e hear a lot about the edges of the US these days. Geographically, these places might be in the middle of the continent, but they are on the periphery of the country’s economic life, and often the social one too. The people who live there are desperate and pitiable, we are told, just as much as they are brutal and superstitious.

Tara Westover’s memoir is about being from just such a place and people. She was born to Mormon fundamentalist parents in Idaho, the youngest of seven. Her father Gene was the prophet of their small family, convinced the world was going to end at the stroke of the millennium. (When it did not, the author observes, the “disappointment in his features was so childlike, for a moment I wondered how God could deny him this”.) He does not believe in sending his children to school, but does believe that dairy products are sinful, owing to a message from God. “Isaiah doesn’t say which is evil, butter or honey,” is how he delivers the good news. “But if you ask, the Lord will tell you!”

Faye, Westover’s mother, largely defers to her husband, in spite of what evidently were some doubts about the divinity of his testimony. She finds some independence in her roles as a kind of faith healer and as an experienced but apparently unlicensed midwife. Eventually, she takes up essential oils, something called muscle testing, and “energy work”. That all these activities appear somewhat contrary to Mormon religious doctrine is something Westover never explicitly addresses. In the same manner that her child self once did, she seems to accept her mother’s explanations. Muscle testing, for example, is an “act of faith in which God spoke through her fingers”.

In this account – Westover’s family dispute her version of events – life is grim in all the ways one might expect. Money is a constant struggle; Gene works largely in scrap metal but it isn’t enough. Cars driven by exhausted family members crash during long drives, but hospitals and western medicine are forbidden so injuries persist and fester. An amazing number of freak accidents befall the male Westovers: leg shreddings, burnings. The author herself is repeatedly beaten and abused by an elder brother who charges into her room while she’s sleeping and fastens his hands around her throat, calling her a whore because of her friendship with a local boy.

And she gradually makes her way out of all of it. She has no formal education but manages to study her way to college. She struggles initially but gets good enough marks to do a PhD at Cambridge. And in the course of all that, Westover writes, she found herself – through what some might call a “transformation” and others a “betrayal”. As she puts it in the last line of the book: “I call it an education.”

If this were the 1990s, a snarky columnist might have already slapped a genre label on this book from the summary alone, deriding it as an example of “misery lit”. These chronicles of tough beginnings were enormously popular; Frank McCourt ’s Angela’s Ashes and Augusten Burroughs’s Running With Scissors topped bestseller charts. Critics are apt to castigate the sentimentalism that often thuds through these books – people in them are villains and heroes, the messiness of real life condensed into easier answers about who was right or wrong. And when James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces turned out to be largely bunk, critics everywhere secretly rejoiced. They knew it, they said. They knew these books were dishonest melodramas.

Westover’s narrative style – episodic, meditative and repetitive – doesn’t embrace melodrama to the extent that many of those books did. Her voice is slightly flimsy, scaffolding with sheets of plastic floating off, as if still in the process of building itself. Other than as a sort of articulate vortex of suffering, one hasn’t much of a sense of her. Educated relies on the conceit that Westover was saved by books, but at the end I had a sense of our narrator still hiding behind her degrees and certificates, not quite ready to step into the light. I kept thinking of Mary Karr ’s The Liars’ Club , a memoir of her hardscrabble Texas upbringing, and how Karr’s voice was one you couldn’t ignore.

Like Karr, Westover has a story to tell that shouldn’t be ignored. Her background says something important about the US: that even in a place of great opportunity, you can grow up without any idea of how to touch its white-hot centre. This memoir tracks all the ways that traditional American life puts up roadblocks and actively dissuades you from outgrowing your “roots”. There are insights here that could compete with JD Vance’s problematic and more ideological Hillbilly Elegy – if only they were more directly articulated.

Educated is published by Hutchinson. To order a copy for £12.74 (RRP £14.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

Tara Westover gained a PhD from Cambridge University

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Winner of the 2018 BookBrowse Nonfiction Award An unforgettable memoir about a young girl who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University.

Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills" bag. In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged metal in her father's junkyard. Her father distrusted the medical establishment, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The 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 an older brother became violent. When another brother got himself into college and came back with news of the world beyond the mountain, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. She taught herself enough mathematics, grammar, and science to take the ACT and was admitted to Brigham Young University. There, she studied psychology, politics, philosophy, and history, learning for the first time about pivotal world events like the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement. 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. Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty, and of the grief that comes from severing ties with those closest to you. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes, and the will to change it.

Chapter 1 Choose the Good

My strongest memory is not a memory. It's something I imagined, then came to remember as if it had happened. The memory was formed when I was five, just before I turned six, from a story my father told in such detail that I and my brothers and sister had each conjured our own cinematic version, with gunfire and shouts. Mine had crickets. That's the sound I hear as my family huddles in the kitchen, lights off, hiding from the Feds who've surrounded the house. A woman reaches for a glass of water and her silhouette is lighted by the moon. A shot echoes like the lash of a whip and she falls. In my memory it's always Mother who falls, and she has a baby in her arms. The baby doesn't make sense - I'm the youngest of my mother's seven children - but like I said, none of this happened. A year after my father told us that story, we gathered one evening to hear him read aloud from Isaiah, a prophecy about Immanuel. He sat on our ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

Many of Tara's father's choices have an obvious impact on Tara's life, but how did her mother's choices influence her? How did that change over time?
Tara's brother Tyler tells her to take the ACT. What motivates Tara to follow his advice?
Charles was Tara's first window into the outside world. Under his influence, Tara begins to dress differently and takes medicine for the first time. Discuss Tara's conflicting admiration for both Charles and her father.
Tara has titled her book Educated and much of her education takes place in classrooms, lectures, or other university environments. But not all. What other important moments of "education" were there? What friends, acquaintances, or experiences had ...
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Westover's incredible story is about testing the limits of perseverance and sanity. Her father may have been a survivalist, but her psychic survival is the most impressive outcome here. Although this memoir represents Westover's own perspective, she strives to be rational and charitable by questioning her own memory and interpretation of events, often looking for outside confirmation from other family members who witnessed the same events. This is one of the most powerful and well-written memoirs I've ever read... continued

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Beyond the Book

Educated author Tara Westover's Idaho family runs Butterfly Express , a successful business selling essential oils and other herbal remedies. Her mother, LaRee Westover, trains herbalists and is the author of a book on herbalism, Butterfly Miracles with Essential Oils . Throughout her childhood, Westover was treated with foraged herbs instead of pharmaceuticals. "For as long as I could remember, whenever I was in pain, whether from a cut or a toothache, Mother would make a tincture of lobelia and skullcap," she writes. "It had never lessened the pain, not one degree. Because of this, I had come to respect pain, even revere it, as necessary and untouchable." It wasn't until she was in college that she tried painkiller pills for the first time....

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In 'Educated,' the inspiring story of an isolated young woman determined to learn

Tara Westover is living proof that some people are flat-out, boots-always-laced-up indomitable. Her new book, Educated (Random House, 334 pp., ★★★★ out of four), is a heartbreaking, heartwarming, best-in-years memoir about striding beyond the limitations of birth and environment into a better life.

At age 16, Westover, who had never attended school, who could only watch longingly as the school bus passed by on the highway every day, made a decision: She studied to pass college admission tests and got herself into Brigham Young University. She didn’t have the sense or sophistication to know exactly what she was aiming for. She simply had the tiny nugget of an idea that other kids, normal kids, went to school and learned things, and that was probably a good thing.

Her childhood had been hard and odd. She and her six siblings grew up in rural Idaho in a filthy, ramshackle house nestled against a mountain she loved and a chaotic junkyard she didn’t. No television, radio or even telephone for many years. No doctor visits, no matter what.

Her father was a domineering man who responded to conflict or challenge with long lectures about God and obsessed about armed Feds showing up at the door. The kids had “head-for-the hills” bags they could grab if they had to abandon their home and survive in the woods. He insisted on home births, and though some of the children attended school for a time, he eventually ruled all public schooling off-limits. He ordered that guns, provisions and water be buried on the property so that when the apocalypse came — “when everyone (would be) drinking from puddles and living in darkness” — his family would survive.

The author’s mother, an herbalist and midwife, was worn out and worn down by marriage. She rarely challenged her husband, abiding by his decrees and tending to family injuries — including her own horrific brain injury from a car wreck (from which she never fully recovered) — at home, with needles, thread, herbs and bed rest.

Westover learned to drive a forklift when she was too young to drive a car, endured various kinds of physical and emotional abuse by a brother, and was instructed in the “art of shutting up,” as her mother called it. That required keeping utterly silent when possible and speaking little when it wasn’t to protect the family and the circumstances of their lives.

For all that she endured, hers did not approach the horrifically isolated and abusive lives of the 13 children in the Turpin family in California who made recent headlines. Westover is careful to present the good parts with the bad: She had loving relationships with her grandparents and a few friends outside the family; her father was at times tender; she was permitted to participate in local theater; and she worked in town sometimes.

And even when presenting the rough parts, Westover, now 31, doesn’t wail. She writes about it as she processed it when she was growing up insulated: in a straightforward manner. It wasn’t until she reached her teen years that she began to realize not everyone lived this way.

So she went off to BYU at 17 with 12 jars of home-canned peaches and a garbage bag full of clothes (all the wrong kinds). She made few friends, had to cover enormous ground to make up for her cultural and book-learning ignorance, and yet, eventually she received a doctoral degree from Cambridge.

It’s incredible, yes. But once you sift through her life, not so very surprising.

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“Educated,” by Tara Westover

By Alexandra Schwartz

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I am far from the first critic to recommend Tara Westover’s astounding memoir, “ Educated ,” but if its comet tail of glowing reviews has not yet convinced you, let me see what I can do. Westover was born sometime in September, 1986—no birth certificate was issued—on a remote mountain in Idaho, the seventh child of Mormon survivalist parents who subscribed to a paranoid patchwork of beliefs well outside the mandates of their religion. The government was always about to invade; the End of Days was always at hand. Westover’s mother worked as a midwife and an herbal healer. Her father, who claimed prophetic powers, owned a scrap yard, where his children labored without the benefit of protective equipment. (Westover recounts accidents so hideous, and so frequent, that it’s a wonder she lived to tell her tale at all.) Mainstream medicine was mistrusted, as were schools, which meant that Westover’s determination to leave home and get a formal education—the choice that drives her book, and changed her life—amounted to a rebellion against her parents’ world.

This story, remarkable as it is, might be merely another entry in the subgenre of extreme American life, were it not for the uncommon perceptiveness of the person telling it. Westover examines her childhood with unsparing clarity, and, more startlingly, with curiosity and love, even for those who have seriously failed or wronged her. In part, this is a book about being a stranger in a strange land; Westover, adrift at university, can’t help but miss her mountain home. But her deeper subject is memory. Westover is careful to note the discrepancies between her own recollections and those of her relatives. (The ones who still speak to her, anyway. Her parents cut her off long ago.) “Part of me will always believe that my father’s words ought to be my own,” she writes. If her book is an act of defiance, a way to set the record of her own life straight, it’s also an attempt to understand, even to respect, those whom she had to break away from in order to get free.

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Title: Educated

Author: Tara Westover

Publisher: Random House

Genre: Memoir, coming-of-age tale

First Publication: 2018

Language: English

Major Characters: Tara Westover, Gene Westover (Her Dad), Faye Westover (Her Mother), Shawn Westover, Charles, Professor Steinberg

Theme: Memory, History, and Subjectivity; Learning and Education; Devoutness and Delusion; Family, Abuse, and Entrapment

Setting: Idaho, Utah, Cambridge

Narration: First person

Book Summary: Educated by Tara Westover

Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her “head-for-the-hills bag”. In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father’s junkyard.

Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The 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.

Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention of Tara Westover. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one’s life through new eyes and the will to change it.

Book Review: Educated by Tara Westover

Educated is a memoir of the growing up of Tara Westover. The book is split into three parts: growing up and her childhood; College, predominantly at BYU; and, further education and the cracking of familial relationships. This book, I found, was largely an exploration of her familial relationships and the empowerment of education.

This memoir starts off in Bucks Peak , where Tara grows up on the mountain, which was presented as very picturesque in writing. Without seeing pictures of the place, you could imagine the junkyard Tara use to play and work in, the animals roaming the sides of the mountain, her numerous siblings all playing around and living under her father’s roof.

“It’s strange how you give the people you love so much power over you.”

Tara’s father is a prominent figure in this memoir; a fundamentalist Mormon, he teaches the Mormon book as gospel and is incredibly strict in his teachings. He also states how he receives messages from God and all events in the world are leading up to The End of Days, the end of the world and so he ruthlessly enlists the help of his children and wife to prepare for this impending doom (this includes storing food and trying to dig a waterline into the mountain). Besides these views of grandeur, her father is also manipulative and often deceitful to achieve what he wants. He also has a very misogynistic view of what women should and shouldn’t be, how they should dress, etc.

Throughout childhood you see Tara complying with these ideals (for example, judging women on the length of their skirts if they are above the ankle). She doesn’t know any other way of thinking or critical thought as this is the only way she has been taught to think. She never attends school and is taught to reject societal conventions and to judge others who are unlike her, to see them as wrong.

“We are all of us more complicated than the roles we are assigned in the stories other people tell”

Tara also has to deal with an abusive and dangerous family member, her brother. He is incredibly manipulative and deceptive and uses violence. You watch her journey through self doubt and self blame, and even when she does accept it,. her family members turn a blind eye. These parts of the book were uncomfortable to read.

Through attending BYU and onto Cambridge for her doctorate, you find Tara developing as a person, but also admitting the strain between her life on the junkyard and her life at prestigious institutions in education. The gap between family and education broadens and conflicts her mind. Through education, she was empowered and her transformation was courageous. She is absolutely remarkably smart despite the containment of her family values causing her severe mental health problems. She develops critical thinking and analysis of her own life, freeing herself from the confines of her father’s teaching. The great thing about Educated by Tara Westover is that, despite her conflicts with certain family members, she was able to develop and create new familial relationships with others, leading to loving and trusting relationships.

“I began to experience the most powerful advantage of money: the ability to think of things besides money.”

Educated by Tara Westover was lyrical in prose and read as incredibly smart. From the outset you can see how smart and curious Tara was and is as a person. This book held the qualities of being heart-breaking and uplifting, but mostly exceedingly frustrating. This frustration was not from the writing but from how people can react to someone admitting that they were/are a victim of abuse. This was a remarkable story to read and Tara is an incredibly courageous and resilient person.

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

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Educated by Tara Westover review: An extraordinary Mormon upbringing recounted with evocative lyricism

Tara westover hadn’t heard about the holocaust, wwii or martin luther king until university.

Westover’s story is so extraordinary that its bare bones would have been enough to make a fascinating book. Photograph: Kenny Crookston/BYU

During an art history lecture in her first term at Brigham Young University, Utah, Tara Westover came across a word she had never encountered before. Having seen other students ask questions, Westover raised her hand. “I don’t know this word,” she said. “What does it mean?”

What she describes as “an almost violent silence” followed. Then the professor snapped, “Thanks for that” and continued with the lecture. Afterwards a previously friendly classmate told her, “You shouldn’t make fun of that” and walked away. Confused, Westover went to the computer lab and looked up the word. Then she understood the reaction to her question. The word was “Holocaust”.

Westover was born in 1986, but until that day, she had never heard of the mass murder of Jews during the second World War. She had never heard of Napoleon, or Martin Luther King, and she thought Europe was a country. She had never set foot in a classroom or visited a doctor. She had grown up in rural Idaho in a family dominated by her father Gene, a radical Mormon survivalist who was determined to keep his seven children out of, as he saw it, the clutches of the government and the wider world.

Officially the children were being “home-schooled”, but by the time Tara was eight, all pretence at formal lessons had stopped, and she was soon working hard in the family junkyard. Schooling, according to the Westover parents, was “brainwashing”. The only other families with whom they socialised were, like them, preparing for societal breakdown or a raid by government forces. And yet today Tara, who had never been in a classroom until she went to Brigham Young University, has an M Phil and a PhD from Cambridge. How did that happen? And what else did she gain – and lose – along the way?

Westover’s story is so extraordinary that its bare bones would have been enough to make a fascinating book, so the fact that she tells it with such enormous skill and insight feels like a bonus. The narrative is perfectly paced, revealing more and more details as Westover gradually begins to see her family, whose beliefs and lifestyle she has always taken for granted, in relief for the first time.

Race, for example, isn’t mentioned at all in the book until Westover reaches college – beforehand, it simply hasn’t been something she’s thought about, growing up in an entirely white environment. But as she is hit by the reality of America’s brutal racial history, she realises that her family have wilfully or accidentally ignored and dismissed this history, “that we had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalise others.”

There is no doubt that Westover’s parents loved their children deeply. But Gene Westover’s wilful disregard for his family’s safety and wellbeing is so enraging that at times I had to put down the book and take a deep breath. The narrative is full of horrific accidents caused by his refusal to consider basic safety practices. And when these accidents take place, no doctor can be called, because doctors are tools of socialism.

But Westover never demonises him, or her mother, a midwife and herbalist who facilitated his delusions. She doesn’t even demonise her violent brother, whose behaviour provided a further impetus to get away from her stifling environment. 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. But once a woman has learned "how to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to create my own mind, is it possible to reconcile her old and new selves?". Westover knows there is no easy answer to this question. She knows that her education has brought pain as well as fulfilment. But that education has given her ability to define her life and tell her own unforgettable story, and for that readers everywhere should be grateful.

Anna Carey's sixth novel Mollie on the March will be published in March.

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educated tara westover book review family response

By Tara Westover

Book review and synopsis for Educated by Tara Westover, a personal journey about a childhood in a survivalist home.

Educated is a memoir by Tara Westover, a woman who grows up as the youngest of seven in a rural Idaho Mormon community. She and her siblings were all born at home and are homeschooled, and her parents are deeply suspicious of the government. Her father fears the influence of the Illuminati, thought that Y2K would be the harbinger of the Second Coming, and believes public education standards are just brainwashing.

The story is told in three parts. Part One details her childhood. Westover describes her father's radicalization and the many serious (and often gruesome) injuries that her family members refuse to get medial treatment for.

In Part Two, Westover ventures to college at BYU. She describes the culture shock of being confused about what the Holocaust was or having to learn about slavery, and she struggles through her first romantic relationship. Finally in Part Three, Westover goes to Cambridge for her PhD, attempts to confront her family about their issues and brings us up to date with her life now.

(The Full Plot Summary is also available, below)

Full Plot Summary

Tara Westover grows up with in an unconventional way (no birth certificates, no medical records, etc.). She and her siblings have been raised on a mountaintop in Idaho.

Her family lives in a Mormon community, and her father, Gene , is a survivalist. He believes in self-sufficiency. His dogma becomes entrenched after an incident where the neighbors were attacked by the government. Her mother, Faye , is the town’s midwife, a practice that is illegal in Idaho. Faye had a very normal upbringing, and Tara believes Faye married Gene as rebellion against it.

Tara and her sibling don't have proper schooling, medical care and the like. When Faye is in a serious accident during the move to Idaho, she doesn't receive medical treatment, and she has chronic headaches after that. Gene is against schooling, but Tara’s oldest brother Tyler ends up going to college anyway. Tara decides she needs to go, too.

Tara also recalls an incident where her brother Luke gets burned, though he family’s recollection of what happened is all different. It's one of many incidences where there's discrepancies among her family about what happened growing up. When Y2K approaches, Gene starts getting preoccupied with preparing for Y2K and is depressed when nothing happens.

Tara has a caring relationship with her brother Shawn in some ways, but Shawn also has a dangerousness to him, and he can be mean, controlling, physically and emotionally abusive and violent. Meanwhile, Tyler encourages Tara to go to college. Young Tara wants to change her life. She takes the ACT and is accepted into BYU. Her father is firmly against it and continues to be volatile and dangerous. Her mother and other family members discreetly try to encourage her.

At BYU, Tara settles into her new, strange life. She experiences culture shock as well as difficulties in school since she is far behind the other students going in. When Tara returns home for the summer, she starts hanging out with a boy from town, Charles , and starts to see her previous life as being a little backwards. Gene and Shawn think she’s become "uppity" and call her names. Tara gets a headache, Charles gives her an ibuprofen, and Tara is shocked to experience medicine that actually works (as opposed to the home remedies she's accustomed to).

She's also stressed from financial and academic pressures, and her friends have to help her with her personal hygiene. When Charles visits her home sees the hostile, abusive environment, he feels in over his head and breaks things off with her. The church Bishop at school is supportive of Tara and tries to help her with her. He encourages her to apply for a grant, which later comes through.

During an introductory psychology course, Tara realizes that Gene likely has bipolar disorder. She starts learns the truth of the event (Ruby Ridge incident) from child. It was a drug raid, but Gene had believed the government attacked that family for their beliefs. Meanwhile, at home, Gene gets into a bad accident, and the family cares for him for weeks. When he finally heals, it strengthens Faye and Gene's beliefs that traditional medical treatment is unnecessary.

Tara decides to study abroad at Cambridge. Her professor takes an interest in her and encourages to believe in herself. When she graduates, she decides to pursue a Master’s Degree at Cambridge. As Tara begins her PhD program and after more culture shock, Tara finally starts feeling like she’s fitting in at Cambridge. On the home front, she also attempts to confront her family about Shawn's behavior. Audrey and Tara discuss Shawn's abusive behavior, but it results in more violent and angry outbursts from Shawn. When nothing changes, Tara talks to her father who refuses to believe her, and Faye tries to convince Tara her memories are wrong. Shawn says he's cutting Tara out of his life, and soon Audrey recants and cuts Tara out as well.

Tara finally tells them goodbye and walks out. Tara’s work on her PhD suffers, but she’s able to get back on track when Tyler surprisingly supports her. Tara gets her PhD. In the final chapters, Tara goes home after a long absence, but has not reconciled with her parents.

The book ends with Tara reflecting on her fractured family. When Faye's mother passes away, Tara goes to the funeral, but sits apart from them. Shawn does not look at Tara during the service. As of the publication of the book many years later, the funeral is the last time Tara has seen her parents.

For more detail, see the full Section-by-Section Summary .

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Book Review

Educated , by Tara Westover, was one of the bestselling books on 2018 and has continued to top the charts even now, despite being released over a year ago. I put it on my to-read list thanks to Bill Gate’s book blog , and Ellen Degeneres read it after Michelle Obama recommended it to her.

Point is, if you’re reading this book, at least you know you’re in good company.

( Update 8/2020 : LaRee Westover — “Faye” in the book, the mother of Tara Westover, has written a book called “Educating” that’s partially a response to Educated. She’s crowdfunding it on Indiegogo . )

Educated opens with an episode from Westover’s childhood. She is six years old. As it was explained to her, a nearby family, the Weavers, has been under siege and shot at by the government for being “freedom fighters,” resulting in the deaths of the mom and a 14-year-old boy. (In reality, the Weavers were in a raid gone awry for possessing illegal weapons .) It’s a formative experience, marking the point where her father starts to transform into a radicalized survivalist, and Westover wonders in the book a few times what he would have been like if she’d known him before that.

Westover writes that “four of my parents’ seven children don’t have birth certificates. We have no medical records because we were born at home and have never seen a doctor or nurse. We have no school records because we’ve never set foot in a classroom.”

Author Tara Westover

The Good Stuff

Educated is a fascinating book on multiple levels. As a personal journey for Westover, it’s triumphant and hopeful. Westover goes from receiving very little education to eventually getting her PhD at Cambridge.

As a story, it’s unique. Westover’s experiences make for a distinctive perspective, accented with colorful anecdotes.

And as a reader, it’s interesting to consider how her perspective is shaped by the usual fallacies of memory and perspective.

For example, as I was reading, I wondered if the event she describes in the first chapter was as dramatic as she believes, or if the drama of it was heightened by being told about it at a young age and slowly building a mythos out of it. How would she have viewed her father if no one had ever later described the scene to her?

Some Criticisms and Caveats

To be honest, Educated is not the type of book I would’ve selected if it weren’t for its overwhelming popularity. It’s highly personal and not a topic I’m particularly interested in. But the story was compelling enough that I found myself invested in it, even if it did drag in a few parts.

I couldn’t help feeling, though, that perhaps Westover wrote this book too soon. It seems like the story we’re reading is the one she’s constructed to make sense of everything that happened to her, but I imagine she still has a longer journey to really process it all and what it means.

Some parts of the book, especially when it comes to her own behavior seem too neat and tidy to be the whole story. When her father offers her a blessing, she responds “I love you. But I can’t. I’m sorry, Dad” and he just walks out of the room. Scenes like that feel more like a made-for-TV movie than the truth.

When the book concludes, things are essentially unresolved with her family. I would be surprised if that’s where their story ends, even if they made some big mistakes.

Educated vs. Hillbilly Elegy

There have been a number of comparisons of Educated with J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy , but they’re fairly different books. Hillbilly Elegy is a much more political book that’s trying to explain the economic conditions impacting white working-class Appalachian communities. Meanwhile, though Westover’s memoir involves a family that is geographically rooted in Trumpland, her story isn’t meant to be representative of Trump voters or even of her Mormon community in Southern Idaho.

Westover’s father has more radical views than most in their religious community. He firmly believes women shouldn’t work, and he’s a survivalist, busy hoarding food and being paranoid about potential attacks from the government and whatnot. Westover discusses how he likely has an untreated personality disorder.

Read it or Skip It?

I enjoyed parts of Educated. It’s an inherently interesting story, and one that’s worth telling.

It’s not a book I would have normally chosen for myself if it weren’t for all the glowing endorsements, but I’m glad I gave it a shot. For me, it didn’t quite live up to the hype, but I do feel like I got something out of her story.

Have you read this book or would you consider reading it? See Educated on Amazon .

Tara Westover’s Family and Responses to Educated

I went through a lot of the comments that her family has made publicly (on Facebook, Amazon, and Goodreads, etc.) about the book, and it seems Westover’s family members have been vocal about their disagreement (“lies”, according to them) with some of the parts of the book. However, throughout Educated, Westover often acknowledges the question marks in her memories, and it seems like they mostly take issue with the overall portrayal as opposed to disputing specific facts.

To be fair, it does seem like her family members are not quite the bumpkins she makes them out to be. At one point in the book, her mom has to force her dad’s hand in getting a phone line installed, for example. However, in reality they don’t seem as backwards — they run a business and are pretty active on Facebook and whatnot. Her mom comments frequently on the book.

Tara gives many of her family monikers in the book, but in actuality her parents are Val (“ Gene “) and LaRee Westover (“ Faye “). “Shawn” is the nickname for Travis. (Tyle, Richard and Luke Westover are referred to by their actual names in the book.) Her older sister Valaree (“ Audrey “) and her mother run an essential oils business together. It has a Facebook , Instagram and even a YouTube channel. They even sell a book about essential oils . The family’s lawyer claims it has 30 employees, multiple facilities and relies on an automated assembly line ( PDF version in case that link goes down).

On the other hand, it’s worth mentioning that her brother — or at least someone claiming to be him — Tyler (real name) has come out with extensive comments that don’t seem to contradict the book. He noted some inaccuracies in her perceptions ( PDF version ), but seems to corroborate large parts of the story. Also, Richard (also his real name)’s profile on his university’s website ( PDF version ) corroborates the spotty education they received as kids: “Westover said he is probably the only ISU masters-level chemist who had to start with a beginning math course at ISU.”

In the comments of one of the articles linked above, Richard Westover has also responded to the book with the following:

“The relationship between my sister and my parents, like that of many poeple, is more complicated than either this article or the book can portray. Tara is doing the best she can with what she knows and I give her kudos as well for that. I think people reading either the book or the article should suspend judgement. Having read both, and lived through it as well, I would not consider myself in possesion of the facts tsufficient to pass judgement to the extent many of the commenters seem to be willing to do. To you it is a book and it is cheap to rant about it. To me, it is my life and I’m still living it. Tara comes to my house to visit occasionally and I still call my parents every week.”

Important Note : While they seem to want to share their side of the story, its seems sad that many people have taken that as an invitation to harass her family. As a reminder, they’re private citizens responding to a story about themselves. John Oliver did a fantastic piece on public shaming . He discusses how it’s often a useful tool, but also how it can be abused. I hope no one reads this book and thinks that the main takeaway should be “I need to go harass these private citizens / people I don’t know RIGHT NOW.”

Book Excerpt

Read the first pages of Educated

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Great review!!

thank you! and thanks for dropping by!

I really liked Educated but I see what you mean by saying there will probably be more to the story. Really thorough review!

I can see why people liked it so much for sure, I think I probably had unrealistic expectations reading it this late in the game — thanks for dropping by!

Great review of the book, both of its attributes and its faults. I think the book treads an often invisible line of reporting memories versus reporting facts, and I appreciated that Westover was open about the possibility that the two might not be the same for her. The book really spoke to me as an educator who possesses a fair amount of privilege, but I think we can all learn something about the importance of not writing people off as lost causes simply because they are ignorant. I’m glad you found some value in her story, even if you didn’t love it. (It’s so easy to be disappointed by such great hype!)

Thank you, Veronica! I agree, I liked that she is really open about admitting that she’s only recounting her memories of what happened. And yes! I think it’s so true that there’s a lot of valuable lessons to be learned from her story. I’m glad people are reading it. Honestly, I think it’s just in certain parts where I knew where the story was headed (I’d heard her talk about the book before reading it, etc.), I got a little bit bored once I sort of had the gist of what was going on (but I think that’s just my own impatience). Plus with all the hype, I had like CRAZY expectations, haha. Thank you for your insightful comments!

Loved the review!

Thank you! And thanks for reading!

Great review. You really dug into the background. You made some good points about how soon this was written after. I do usually think it takes some time to make sense of our past.

Thank you catherine!

Terrific review, thanks

thank you! :)

very nice review!!

thank you very much! :)

I heard about this book. I need to read it but I fear it might break my heart before I get to the end so I have to gear myself up for it. Really a well-written write/up. I hope the author sees your post.

Thank you so much and thanks for reading!

Very thoughtful review. Thanks!

Thank you, much appreciated!

Great review! I have been wanting to read this book for so long now, but just end up choosing something else always for some reason.

Thank you! Hope you enjoy it if you get a chance to read it!

The waitlist for this book is nuts. I feel like I’ve been waiting forever. I love stories about people who grow up in unusual situations, so I think I’ll like this one. Great review!

oh yes, if that’s what interests you, I definitely think you should read it! Thanks for dropping by! Hope you get off the waitlist soon! :)

Been thinking about reading this one for a while now, thank you for the great review!

thank you! hope you like it if you get a chance to read it!

Excellent review! Although it’s not a book I would usually be drawn to, your review made me curious enough to give it a try.

That’s great to hear, thank you!

Your review of Educated was the most honest of all the ones I’ve read. Thank you!

Are Educated and Hillbilly Elegy novels? I thought they were biographical memoirs and considered non fiction. maybe that’s where people get caught up in trying to find out if it’s true or not. If it’s a novel, then just take as a story, not the truth.

I can’t wait to read it.

Fantastic articulation of a story that has something for everyone. With or without the abusive factor, I felt she told her story in a way that would benefit anyone’s family situation. The abusive factors, the dangers inherent in the working situations she experienced as a child, only added to our insights into these relationships. So many episodes in the book gave me personal emotions, but one favorite scene is when Tara is on the rooftop in england with her professor and her classmates. The wind is fierce and would scare anyone. Tara walks up to edge of roof, standing as if there is no wind and has no fear. Her professor comes near her and observes how her classmates are huddled together in the middle of the roof, bent forward and facing sideways so the wind won’t sweep them away. Tara, for all her differences growing up, stands like a superman in front of the other girls.

Her stories, like the roof scene, weave together a larger story of a life filled with unique experiences that might bring anyone to their knees. She survives all this in such a way that she shows all of us that, if we stick to it and really try, we can be supermen, too. Thank you, Tara, for sharing your love and strength. Beautiful book.

I enjoyed your review until you commented that the crazy Westover’s radical beliefs were firmly in Trumpland. Really?? What on earth do their views have to do with the average Trump supporter? You, obviously have no idea.

Hi Karen, I write in the review that their family is located in Trumpland (as in, located in an area where people generally support Trump) but their beliefs are NOT representative and are actually considered extreme, even for their community.

Hope this clears things up. Best, Jenn

Loved the book but very upset with the people in Preston. Why didn’t they step in to help her and why didn’t someone do something about “Shawn”? Preston is a small town where everyone knows everyone’s business. I know as I grew up in several small towns in southern Idaho. I admire Tara with what she has down with her life.

I was impressed with the book because I personally relate to it. Like Tara, I lacked a high school education and BYU gave me a chance no one else would have. I am even more impressed when I have listened to her interviews. She is in the same position that I have been my entire life. I know good people on both sides of our divided country and we desperately need intelligent people like Tara to be able to discourse with both side and bring reason to our crumbling society.

I agree with Karen. Labeling an area of the country “Trumpland” reeks of a kind of racism. Albeit not the most common kind, but in my opinion still shows ignorance. Trump has actually gotten some pretty important things done in our country. Do your research.

How would it be racism, also read the reviewers reply, it clears up what she meant

I read this a few years ago, right after it came out. Her mother is releasing her side of the story this coming year and I just pre-ordered it. I own one of LaRee’s books already, and buy her products on a regular basis. Her mother is nothing short of incredible, even if her father is possibly insane. Because of LaRee’s new book, I have revisited Tara’s book. This review is much better than most of the reviews I have read, and interviews I have watched. Thank you for that. I am very frustrated at most readers’ inability to see what this book is about. It is not about “Mormonism” or homeschooling or education or natural medicine at all. It is about mental illness and abuse. Her focus on being off the grid, Mormon, and homeschooled or unschooled takes away from the real story. I feel like all of the interviews I have watched have focused on the fact that she was born at home, unschooled (which is what she was, yet no one has done enough research before an interview to name it as such), and never went to the doctor. There are a great many families that practice natural medicine and unschool that don’t need her form of “education”. I unschool my children, practice natural medicine and am a Latter Day Saint. We also live in Idaho and are self employed. I have many friends who choose the same lifestyle. However, my children are very confident, know they are safe and loved, and have had very magical childhoods free from the pressures of school. So far we have one college graduate. We belong to several homeschool groups and have a rich life free from the restraint of the mainstream. She generalizes the the movements that she attacks. Her interviews make me sick. She ignores the horrible parts of her life in the book and focuses on the lack of “education”. Her unschooling and being un-vaxed had nothing to do with her trauma. Thank you for focusing on the trauma and seeing the book for what it truly is.

I just finished Educated and it was great. It is hard to believe what some children have to live through to become adults. It appears to me that Tara has done a great job of raising and educating herself. She reminds me of Jeanette Walls from the Glass Castle. Great informative review.

I just finished the book last night and your review was spot on. I didn’t think I would get into it the way I did but it definitely held my interest

An interesting review. As a child of an emotionally abusive parent (who now swears she doesn’t remember half of the things her kids recount to her) I can easily see where the disconnect between Tara and her parents’ narrative lies. As a child we miss intention behind parents’ action. As a parent we miss the impact. The truth likely lies somewhere in between. But – and this is obviously a bias of my own experience – I know I believe none of her story was concocted.

Hey, thanks for your thoughts. That’s definitely a useful perspective to consider as well. I appreciate you sharing your comment!

I just finished the book and so appreciate d Tara’s story. This is a personal account of one person’s struggle to understand, deal with and overcome abuse from within a family. Is is fair for any of us to judge her journey through this? Why does it matter? I commend this young woman for examining herself, her life and her worth in it. Her willingness to offer this story to anyone who may need to hear it is truly a gift. If it speaks to you in some way, drink it in. If not, let it pass over you. This is art.

thank you for this post! i love it

thanks umi!

Hi and thank you for inviting my thoughts here. Having a little extra time on my hands recently has allowed me to revisit some of the themes explored in Educated. It’s funny because I recently sought out some perspectives on the book from a few sites. Bill Gates’ perspective mostly focuses on Tara’s ability to be self taught. He emphasizes how impressive Tara is and rightly so. Having been brought up without access to any sort of education, her tenacity and intrinsic motivation to learn and become educated are truly mind-blowing. And as important as this particular theme is to both Tara personally, and the theme of education itself, it is not what made me consider Educated over and over for the past year.

The other theme, as many of you may know, is mental illness and how it can truly destroy family members, and eventually destroy not just the family dynamic, but the family as a permanent institution. Along with the mental illness and abuse, I found myself personally recognizing and feeling a very sad connection to the constant denial and enabling, as well as the crushing betrayal and eventual decision on Tara’s part to break ties with family members. This is where I really connected with Tara. If there were a support group for people who have either been abandoned by family members or who have been forced to end relationships with family members, I think maybe people like Tara and I would truly benefit. From my perspective, it’s your worst nightmare. You never really make a clean break from even the most mentally ill and/or abusive siblings. You think about them and worry about them, even though you know there’s nothing left that you can do. It is a pain that is truly debilitating. I sincerely thank Tara for the time and hard work that went into sharing her story. No one likes to feel that they are the only one who has ever experienced a particular kind of tragic loss. There are support groups for grieving, but not for this kind of grief. Alas, Educated helped me to see that I am not walking this path alone. For some of us, family is not forever.

Tara Westover’s story is extraordinary. It is remarkable that three of the off spring went on to receive PhDs.. It is sad and disturbing that “Shawn” never received the mental help he needed. There is a thread if mental illness that runs through the family.. Congrats to Tara for overcoming such difficulties. I think there may be more to come.

This was my first book of 2022. It was eye-opening for me to say the least. While I think it is told from Tara’s perspective, I wish to remind everyone that for a person to share the truth of their family life requires great courage and is often sugar coated. It is an extremely difficult thing to do. Thank you Tara for being so brave. Your courage has given me strength 🙏🏻

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Book Review

Educated by Tara Westover

Publisher: Random House | Genre: Memoir, coming-of-age tale

Title: Educated

Author: Tara Westover

Publisher: Random House

Genre: Memoir, coming-of-age tale

First Publication: 2018

Language: English

Major Characters: Tara Westover, Gene Westover (Her Dad), Faye Westover (Her Mother), Shawn Westover, Charles, Professor Steinberg

Theme: Memory, History, and Subjectivity; Learning and Education; Devoutness and Delusion; Family, Abuse, and Entrapment

Setting: Idaho, Utah, Cambridge

Narration: First person

Book Summary: Educated by Tara Westover

Book Review: Educated by Tara Westover

Educated by Tara Westover is an anguished story about growing up in the mountains of Idaho in a fundamentalist Mormon/survivalist family led by a father convinced that the socialist government in every respect was evil. As a family they prepared for “The Days of Abomination” and saw the opposition as The Illuminati. They lived pretty much “off the grid” for a long time—birthing at home (Tara’s mom is a midwife and herbalist; her Dad ran a junkyard). They had no birth certificates, no social security numbers, went to no doctors, had no contact with any media, and had no public schooling at all.

In the mountains she was defined largely by her father and brother, Sean, who were abusive, and throughout she painfully struggles with how to honor her father and his narrow, paranoid version of the world as she learned everything that was largely denied her.

“I believed then–and part of me will always believe–that my father’s words ought to be my own.”

This was a well-written, gripping story, and I never read these kinds of stories but it was highly reviewed and much awarded so I thought I would try it and am glad I did. But it was also really uncomfortable to read. It weighed on me as I read it. I thought of largely discredited memoirs and wondered if this would become one of those, as her story is hard to fathom–both the horrific parts and the successful parts–her escape is almost unbelievable.

She also has what she describes as a nervous breakdown at one point as her family thought she was evil and dangerous for not following her father’s dictates to live in the home and (dangerously) work for him as a scrapper. Her father is crazy and her brother Sean is crazy-violent, threatening to kill her, and no one agrees with her side of the story. A nightmare. And though she escapes this world, she never is entirely happy, as she loses her family—such as it is–in the process.

“You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them,” she says now. “You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.”

In her view, her mother, forced to become an unlicensed midwife by her husband, was a tower of womanly strength, devoted to her bipolar, authoritarian husband. The family had to bow to his will, paralysed by his delusions, or leave, and she eventually left. One trigger for Westover’s father, as it was for many survivalists then, was a paranoid interpretation of the Ruby Ridge “killing” of Randy Weaver, another survivalist. Early on, Dad interpreted the Holy Bible as telling him that, for instance, milk was sinful and they only used molasses and honey thereafter. He was crazy in so many ways, and only Tara had the strength to finally tell the truth about him and her brother. Everyone else in her family bowed down to him.

Tara Westover, almost unbelievably not only graduated from BYU, but went on to graduate with a PhD in History from Cambridge, becoming truly “educated” about herself, her family, and the world. At Cambridge a Dr. Kerry attempts to cure her of her impostor syndrome, recognizing her special talents and writer and thinker.

“My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.”

This book resonates with present time in the world where white supremacism, separatism, survivalism, fundamentalism, sexism, and mental derangement seem to be ascendant. At the university, in her first class she only had heard the name—Shakespeare, but had to drop it because it was a senior level course. She learned from a roommate that the reason she failed the midterm in Art History is that she had to actually read the textbook. She had never been in school of any kind!

In the university she learned of the Holocaust and slavery, really for the first time; she learned of bipolar disorder, paranoid schizophrenia, she learned of antibiotics and went to a doctor for the first time, she accepted a student grant from the government, all socialist acts her family knew the university and the government would corrupt her with. That she keeps going home where she has been threatened and hurt and lied to resonates with familiar abuse scenarios. But ultimately she finds the courage to go with her new life and not her old one.

I thought that The Glass Castle was the ultimate memoir for dangerous and negligent parenting, but Westover has managed to swipe that unwanted crown. Westover has a uniquely compelling, incredibly harrowing survival story – survival of religious fundamentalism, survival of emotional and physical abuse, survival of being thrown like a fish onto dry land into a world about which she knew nothing. That she not only survived but excelled in this world, studying at Harvard and receiving a Ph.D. from Cambridge, is a testament to her intellectual gifts as well as her courage. And as this memoir makes clear, an inborn talent for exceptional writing doesn’t hurt either.

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“Educated” by Tara Westover: A remarkably candid memoir about growing up survivalist

Posted by Mal Warwick | Memoir , Nonfiction | 0

If you grew up in a comfortable middle-class home, as I did, you may be shocked by Tara Westover ‘s Educated , an account of her childhood and adolescence in a Mormon survivalist family in Idaho. I was. Again and again, I found my jaw dropping at the cruelty, ignorance, and superstition surrounding her. Yet Westover did far more than survive survivalists. Despite never attending school and receiving virtually no home-schooling, she has secured a PhD in intellectual history and political thought from Cambridge University . And two of her six siblings have PhDs as well. Her memoir, Educated , is an astonishing testament to the power of human potential.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

A remarkably candid memoir about growing up among survivalists

As memoir, Educated is unusually honest. Westover portrays her father as what I would call a raving lunatic. The man would hold out for hour after hour about the evils of the government, the Illuminati, and the Medical Establishment. On one occasion one of his bad decisions led to a tragic car crash that grievously wounded Tara’s mother. On another, his stubborn refusal to follow simple safety procedures with dangerous machinery nearly killed Tara and one of her brothers. Much later, he caused an explosion that nearly killed him . In fact, she notes that his behavior suggests he is bipolar—and that couldn’t be more obvious from her account.

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (2018) 336 pages ★★★★★

Here is what Westover’s father told her one evening about her decision to go to college. “‘The Lord has called me to testify,’ he said. ‘He is displeased. You have cast aside his blessings to whore after man’s knowledge. His wrath is stirred against you. It will not be long in coming.'”

But it’s not just her father who’s nuts. She details one incident after another involving one of her older brothers that make him out to be not just cruel and sadistic but dangerously violent as well.

A long, slow learning curve

Yet Westover is equally candid about her own failings. And her education into the ways of the world came slowly. She was sixteen before she began to learn much from any books other than the Book of Mormon and the Bible. In college at Brigham Young University, it was years before she learned to wash her hands after using the toilet. (“‘I teach them not to piss on their hands,'” her father said.) And even as a graduate student at Cambridge she was still learning how to relate successfully to other people.

Westover remained captive to the faith of her father even in college. “Not knowing for certain, but refusing to give way to those who claim certainty, was a privilege I had never allowed myself,” Westover writes. “My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.”

“Learning in our family was entirely self-directed,” she explains. “[Y]ou could learn anything you could teach yourself, after your work was done. Some of us were more disciplined than others. I was one of the least disciplined, so that by the time I was ten, the only subject I had studied systematically was Morse code, because Dad insisted that I learn it.” He had somehow persuaded himself (and his family) that after civilization collapsed, they would be the only people capable of communicating. It wasn’t evident with whom they would communicate.

A powerful attraction to the land

In Educated , Tara Westover makes clear that her experience growing up was by no means all negative. For many years, and presumably to this day, she felt a powerful attraction to the land. “There’s a sense of sovereignty that comes from life on a mountain,” she writes, “a perception of privacy and isolation, even of dominion. In that vast space you can sail unaccompanied for hours, afloat on pine and brush and rock. It’s a tranquillity born of sheer immensity; it calms with its very magnitude, which renders the merely human of no consequence.”

Westover wrote this book at age twenty-nine. She was remarkably young to display such penetrating self-awareness. And her performance as a student both at Brigham Young University and at Cambridge makes clear that she is brilliant. That’s obvious in the book itself. She reveals, too, that she is a gifted singer. (One of the few ways she escaped total immersion in her family as a teenager was as a star in musical productions at a local theater.)

Educated was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the New York Times Book Review and one of the best books of the year by many other publications. It is definitely that.

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You’ll find this book on The 40 best books of the decade from 2010-19.

You may also care to take a look at my post, 14 excellent memoirs . Top 10 nonfiction books about politics and 10 enlightening books about poverty in America might also be of interest.

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EDUCATED BOOK REVIEW, A MEMOIR BY TARA WESTOVER

Educated by Tara Westover is a memoir that is both inspirational and shocking. An emotional rollercoaster, I felt like I was growing right alongside Tara as she discovered herself and came to terms with the current and past abuse from her family. An amazing retelling of her past and one of the top books published in 2018. Keep reading for my full Educated book review.

As part of my 101 Things in 1001 Days Challenge, I promised to review every book I read for the next two years. Educated marks the 9th book review of this year.

If you’re interested in more books I’m excited about, make sure to check out my list !

Educated by Tara Westover

Published by: Harper Collins Publication Date: February 20th, 2018 Genre: Autobiography, Memoir

MY REVIEW OF EDUCATED BY TARA WESTOVER

Educated by Tara Westover is a memoir that describes a coming-of-age story of a young girl who grew up in a fundamentalist, Mormon, family. It’s a story of hardship, growth, and triumph. Tara experiences conflict, abuse, and finally discovers a world outside of it.

Wonderfully written, Tara Westover’s writing style is that of a narrative and story-teller. It is descriptive and captivating, which causes the reader to lose themselves in her unique life story.

There were moments I couldn’t relate to, however, there were plenty of instances that anybody could share in her shoes.

MORMONISM AND FUNDAMENTALISTS

Tara Westover was born to a Fundamentalist Mormon family in Idaho in 1986.

Fundamentalism is defined as:

“A religious movement characterized by a strict belief in the literal interpretation of religious texts, especially of American Protestantism and Islam.”

She was isolated from growing up the way most Mormon children did. Her father rejected any sort of government system – eg. registering her birth, public school system, and the medical establishment. So she grew up without an education and Western medicine.

As Fundamentalists, her family followed the writings in the Bible literally. They were survivalists preparing for the end of the world, stocking up on herbal remedies, canned peaches, gasoline, and ammunition.

This was the context in which our author grew up.

TARA WESTOVER AND FAMILY DYNAMICS

The family dynamics of the Westover family is that of a traditional hierarchical family model in which the father is the head of the household. He runs a junkyard where his 7 children help with the tasks. Tara’s mother prepares herbal medicines and works as a midwife. Life in the Westover family was managed by her father.

Acting as “God’s supervisor”, he ensured his family wasn’t straying from what he interpreted as right and wrong. His concern that each member of the family was doing God’s bidding. However, at times his determination to follow the Bible exactly edged on fanatical. We would later learn that he was probably bipolar or schizophrenic.

Tara’s mother submitted to her husband’s wishes and lived her life according to his wishes. At times we get a glimpse of her own opinions. However, usually, she sets them aside for the sake of her marriage.

Tara also introduces us to her 6 siblings. We interestingly learn that half of them followed the same path as Tara, and the other three continued to live like her father. It’s evident how strong family values are within their family dynamics.

DOMESTIC ABUSE

A recurring theme throughout the book is domestic abuse, and it was probably one of the hardest parts to read. Through her memoir, Tara recounts the abuse she endured from her parents and some of her siblings.

She is physically and mentally abused from her teenage years onward by her brother Shawn. Naturally giving into the criticism of the men in her life, Tara wasn’t aware that she was being abused until a bishop explained it to her. She had been led to believe she was dressing and acting like a “whore” when in actuality she had just hit puberty. He would physically abuse her if she retaliated against his lectures, apologize soon afterward and the cycle continued into her adult life.

Her father’s choices to isolate his children, his carelessness that resulted in multiple life-threatening injuries to himself and his family, and his strict moral standards could also be considered as abusive. Not to mention his mental state which would have exacerbated it.

Tara would eventually come to realize what actually happened when she was a child. This realization would have negative consequences for her relationship with her family as they eventually estranged her.

MENTAL ILLNESSES

Mental illness plays a huge roll in Educated. We learn and witness her father’s bipolar and schizophrenic outbursts, Tara’s mental breakdown likely caused by PTSD, and her battle with imposter syndrome .

Tara’s father’s paranoia towards the government establishment, his careless behavior, and argumentative outbursts are evidence of a mood disorder. It’s unclear what he has because he’s never diagnosed but we can assume his actions and thinking are a result of it.

Through the telling of her memoir, we step into her shoes and experience this, which at times is disturbing. After leaving the family home to pursue an education, Tara feels out of place. She has a sense that she doesn’t belong and doesn’t deserve the opportunities that are presented to her. As an outsider, we root for her and are inspired by the success she has. However, dealing with imposter syndrome Tara Westover couldn’t see that.

One of the most difficult parts of the book is Tara’s mental breakdown while studying for her Ph.D. at Cambridge. The weight of her upbringing, trauma, abuse and the choices she had to make for herself became too much.

THE COST OF OUR CHOICES

If there’s one thing I took away from the entire narrative of her memoir it’s that you can’t choose where you come from but you can choose what to do with it.

Tara left Idaho embarrassed about her origins and afraid to fit in with her new surroundings. She didn’t exactly belong anywhere for a while as she transitioned and adapted. Eventually, she completes her B.A., Masters and Ph.D., came to terms with her past and excited about her future. She took her experience growing up in a Fundamentalist Mormon family in Idaho and used it to fuel her research and growth as a person.

Tara chose her education (the discovery of her own person) over her family. At no fault to herself, her father would not accept the choices she made and chose to alienate his daughter.

EDUCATED BOOK REVIEW – RATING

As I was reading the memoir I thought I was going to rate it a 4. However, I became increasingly invested in Tara’s coming-of-age story, giving it a 5 out of 5 stars on Goodreads.

If you enjoyed Wild or Angela’s Ashes, and enjoy narratives of misery and triumph, I recommend reading Educated by Tara Westover.

If you read the memoir I want to know your thoughts! Were you horrified by Shawn’s abusive behavior? Were you rooting for Tara as she came of her own? Share in the comments section below!

A full-time, multi-passionate, online entrepreneur and blogger. When I’m not managing the Pinterest accounts of my clients, I’m sipping a latte, escaping in a good book, and cuddling with my cats. Introverted and proud!

One Comment

I read it 2 yrs. ago. Absorbing but sometimes hard to take in terms of family violence re her brother, etc. It was given to me as 1 of my Christmas gifts.

Review: Educated, by Tara Westover

by Mark Ward Dec 14, 2018 Books , Culture , Worldview 4 comments

But I’d like to point something out to my fellow Goodreaders [for whom I first wrote this review] that I fear will get lost in our collective rush to see Tara’s story as a confirmation of mainstream Western values: Tara’s story is a conversion story, not a de-conversion story. She didn’t merely de-convert from a hare-brained worldview; she actively converted to a different worldview. That latter worldview is not described in her book in any detail. But it means, among other things, that her story isn’t over. Which view of the world will she live out? If she adopted (as one would naturally expect?) the worldview of the people who educated her at Cambridge and Harvard, I would point out that this view is not a natural default, a neutral and objective place to be, a direct view of the world. It, too, is based on assumptions and beliefs that not everyone shares. It views the world through lenses worn by a minority of humanity, especially historically. It, too, contains suppressions of the truth.

Because Tara did not directly describe her current worldview, I cannot and will not critique it. Again, my primary feeling for her is appreciation and defensiveness. But I would encourage readers to reflect on their own views. Friends, do not to make Tara’s life-thus-far a feel-good story for mainstream Westerners. It’s unsettling to realize that, given an alternate environment, you might be capable of believing as the Westovers do (indeed, their view of essential oils is at least half-accepted by a disturbingly large number of college-educated American women). But I’d encourage you, reader, not to assume that because they are wrong you are right. Put yourself in the shoes of people—like myself—who regard the predominant Western view, the secular and materialist view, as itself hare-brained. The ideas that something could come from nothing, that life could come from non-life, that mind could arise out of non-mind—I regard these as ludicrous in the extreme. The idea that religion can and should be moved to the margins of society I regard as impossible and therefore, in a very real way, self-delusional. Some non-empirical “vision of the good” is going to rule every culture. And it is not clear to me that the West has escaped delusions within its own vision.

I regard the prevailing worldview among Western educated people as having similar overall effects on Western society to the ones that survivalist, conspiracy-theory delusions allegedly (though I do believe Tara, I feel I have to use that word to maintain a modicum of fairness!) had on the Westover family. Yes, I think it’s quite literally crazy to believe that the Illuminati are secretly running the world, that the Holocaust was bankrolled by greedy Jews, that the medical establishment is wicked and ineffective, and that consulting or balancing (or whatever it is) one’s chakras is God’s means of bringing health. I found it revealing that Tara’s mom had previously ascribed such beliefs to the desperation of the ill—and that certain injuries did land Westovers in the hospital despite their disbelief. And I’m not persuaded of the truth of Mr. Westover’s worldview by the fact that he was willing to suffer for it. In fact, it is his willingness to let his own children suffer for it—keeping them out of school, making them work physically dangerous jobs in which they were indeed seriously injured—that confirms what he ought to have known: he was living inside a set of delusions.

But is that so far from what Western materialism is doing to its youth? Direct cause and effect on such a large scale is impossible to prove; people will resort to their worldviews, their presuppositions, to explain even cause and effect. But from where I stand, inside (by God’s grace, but still with many human limitations) a biblical worldview, it looks like sexual promiscuity, the erosion of a coherent moral framework more generally and its replacement with self-actualization, and the combination of over-confidence in the deliverances of science and the under-confidence in the possibility of binding *moral* truth—all these things, fruits of a materialist worldview, are hurting our culture profoundly. Ironically enough, the next audiobook in my Libby app playlist is Our Kids , by Robert Putnam. I expect to see once again that the West’s values are not serving our kids much better than the Westovers’ values served theirs.

Tara had to fight hard—and I admire her so much for this—to reconcile her love for her family with her growing awareness that they lived on their own epistemological spirit-planet. This was most evident in their refusal (allegedly) to protect her from a physically abusive and emotionally manipulative brother. But it was evident in many other ways: I’m glad she escaped. I’m sad that reconciling her familial love with her education had to mean distancing herself from parents who (allegedly) chose extremist beliefs—and a very troubled son—over their gifted daughter. But I think she did right. I think, ultimately, that people who demand that you believe overt untruths (the biggest one being, “My sins against you are all in the past”) in order to have a relationship with you are best served, best loved, by refusal. “Honor your father and mother” does not mean, “Join them in their delusions.”

But you’re going to have to join somebody; there are no truly independent thinkers. How can we avoid group delusions? The Bible says—and if you bristle at that phrase, you especially need to read on—that the creation itself testifies clearly to the “eternal power and divine nature” of God. Acknowledging this truth is the only way to truly escape the rough and tumble, the push and pull of merely human perspectives. All humans are on the same plane. If some are “taller” than others, and see farther (I think Tara is such a one), still none of us enjoys a God’s-eye view. None of us is truly above the fray. We need divine grace to reach down and tell us what he sees from his perspective. This is the only way to avoid the delusions we all stumble into—too often willingly—on this sin-cursed earth.

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Review of “Educated”

Educated is the emotional and thought-provoking memoir of a young woman who grew up in a dysfunctional family. Tara Westover’s family was physically abusive, emotionally abusive, and verbally abusive. This makes her memoir a poignant and inspiring story about a girl who fought her way out of the backwoods to Harvard.

In many ways, Tara’s story parallels J. D. Vance’s story in Hillbilly Elegy , a similar modern rags to educational riches story. But in a fundamental way, Tara’s story differs from Vance’s. These two young authors’ interpretations and take-aways of the dysfunction they grew up with differs dramatically. Tara fixates on homeschooling as a fundamental problem in her childhood, whereas Vance admits his problem was an unstable family life.

You see it in the title. Tara sees her fundamental triumph as overcoming her educationally neglectful background. Educated is peppered with comments along the lines of “I never knew about the Holocaust- because I was homeschooled.” With typical liberal distaste, she dismisses homeschooling as a poor education.

The notion that homeschooling is an inferior education has been so thoroughly debunked Tara’s blanket dismissal is almost laughable. Really, the only question up for debate is whether homeschooling provides an equal or better education to public school. The only way I can explain her disdain for a well-respected method of education is to believe she is projecting her own experience onto the many, many thousands of homeschooling families in America.

Homeschooled or not Schooled

From Tara’s account, her family did not engage in much formal education. You might better say she was not schooled than home schooled. Yet she self-admittedly had high reading comprehension skills and enough education to prepare for and pass the ACT’s with minimal help from an older sibling.

Would it have been better for her parents to provide her with a more structured and aided educational experience? Definitely. But is a public school style, teacher-directed education actually necessary for educational success? Tara herself, about half of her other siblings, and many other famous homeschoolers such as Abraham Lincoln show that learning, and the thirst for more learning, can be awakened in a variety of ways.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say Tara’s non-traditional education was a large part of the reason she did succeed academically. Assuming she had been in a typical public school, most likely she wouldn’t have had such an impressive higher education trajectory. Would a typical public school education have given her such an uncommon interior drive and thirst for education? Maybe, but maybe not. And what caught her instructors’ interest? That she was different because she had been homeschooled. Would they have pulled strings, finding her scholarships and study abroad opportunities, if she had been exactly like everyone else? Probably not.

Hillbilly Elegy Life Lessons

J. D. Vance’s memoir is a fascinating counterpoint to Tara’s. Vance came from a comparable abusive background, but spent his years in public school. Does he credit public school with any of his success? Nope. In fact, he repeatedly emphasizes that he struggled academically despite having every possible opportunity for success at school. What does Vance say made the difference and turned around his downward academic trajectory? It was when he finally moved in permanently with his grandmother in high school and entered a stable living situation for the first time in his life. For Vance, having stable relationships and peace at home were key to academic success.

You can see how Vance’s thoughts apply to Tara’s situation. He might say that her fundamental problem was not that she grew up homeschooled, but that she lived with an abusive, mentally unstable family. Vance would say that like himself, Tara wouldn’t have thrived academically in the public school system either. Her academic success began when she began to put physical and emotional distance between herself and her family.

Still Processing

Is Tara’s story inspiring? Absolutely. But is her portrayal of homeschooling problematic for the average American reader? Yes. I would almost call this book anti-homeschool propaganda, except for the raw pain that bleeds out of Tara’s words, showing her very real wounds. This poor young woman is still reeling from a terrible childhood. Fixating on homeschooling as the problem and education as the solution may help her not focus on the real problem in her life: an abusive family that she struggles to come to terms with. It’s just a shame that she is choosing to vilify homeschooling. I hope that such an intelligent person as Tara will eventually process and accept that her own experience of homeschooling (or not schooling at all) is far from a typical American homeschooling experience.

Should you read Educated ?

Be warned: Educated has quite a bit of domestic abuse and violence. Tara’s abuse from her older brother is particularly painful to read. If you can get past the violence and anti-homeschooling theme, then it is a well-written memoir about a young girl’s self transformation and will to survive. Alternatively, check out Hillbilly Elegy for a thought-provoking story sans the anti-homeschooling themes. (Note that Hillbilly Elegy is heavy on language.) Both these memoirs are absorbing and popular recent books: great for book club discussion or personal reading and reflection.

Or, buy these books through my affiliate page on Bookshop.org .

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An Utterly Misleading Book About Rural America

White Rural Rage has become a best seller—and kindled an academic controversy.

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R age is the subject of a new book by the political scientist Tom Schaller and the journalist Paul Waldman. White Rural Rage , specifically. In 255 pages, the authors chart the racism, homophobia, xenophobia, violent predilections, and vulnerability to authoritarianism that they claim make white rural voters a unique “threat to American democracy.” White Rural Rage is a screed lobbed at a familiar target of elite liberal ire. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the authors appeared on Morning Joe , the book inspired an approving column from The New York Times ’ Paul Krugman , and its thesis has been a topic of discussion on podcasts from MSNBC’s Chuck Todd and the right-wing firebrand Charlie Kirk. The book has become a New York Times best seller.

It has also kindled an academic controversy. In the weeks since its publication, a trio of reviews by political scientists have accused Schaller and Waldman of committing what amounts to academic malpractice , alleging that the authors used shoddy methodologies, misinterpreted data, and distorted studies to substantiate their allegations about white rural Americans. I spoke with more than 20 scholars in the tight-knit rural-studies community, most of them cited in White Rural Rage or thanked in the acknowledgments, and they left me convinced that the book is poorly researched and intellectually dishonest.

White Rural Rage illustrates how willing many members of the U.S. media and the public are to believe, and ultimately launder, abusive accusations against an economically disadvantaged group of people that would provoke sympathy if its members had different skin color and voting habits. That this book was able to make it to print—and onto the best-seller list—before anyone noticed that it has significant errors is a testament to how little powerful people think of white rural Americans. As someone who is from the kind of place the authors demonize—a place that is “rural” in the pejorative, rather than literal, sense—I find White Rural Rage personally offensive. I was so frustrated by its indulgence of familiar stereotypes that I aired several intemperate critiques of the book and its authors on social media. But when I dug deeper, I found that the problems with White Rural Rage extend beyond its anti-rural prejudice. As an academic and a writer, I find Schaller and Waldman’s misuse of other scholars’ research indefensible.

After fact-checking many of the book’s claims and citations, I found a pattern: Most of the problems occur in sections of the book that try to prove that white rural Americans are especially likely to commit or express support for political violence. By bending the facts to fit their chosen scapegoat, Schaller and Waldman not only trade on long-standing stereotypes about dangerous rural people. They mislead the public about the all-too-real threats to our democracy today. As serious scholarship has shown—including some of the very scholarship Schaller and Waldman cite, only to contort it—the right-wing rage we need to worry about is not coming from deep-red rural areas. It is coming from cities and suburbs.

T he most obvious problem with White Rural Rage is its refusal to define rural . In a note in the back of the book, the authors write, “What constitutes ‘rural’ and who qualifies as a rural American … depends on who you ask.” Fair enough. The rural-studies scholars I spoke with agreed that there are a variety of competing definitions. But rather than tell us what definition they used, Schaller and Waldman confess that they settled on no definition at all : “We remained agnostic throughout our research and writing by merely reporting the categories and definitions that each pollster, scholar, or researcher used.” In other words, they relied on studies that used different definitions of rural , a decision that conveniently lets them pick and choose whatever research fits their narrative. This is what the scholars I interviewed objected to—they emphasized that the existence of multiple definitions of rural is not an excuse to decline to pick one. “This book amounts to a poor amalgamation of disparate literatures designed to fit a preordained narrative,” Cameron Wimpy, a political scientist at Arkansas State University, told me. It would be like undertaking a book-length study demonizing Irish people, refusing to define what you mean by Irish , and then drawing on studies of native Irish in Ireland, non-Irish immigrants to Ireland, Irish Americans, people who took a 23andMe DNA test that showed Irish ancestry, and Bostonians who get drunk on Saint Patrick’s Day to build your argument about the singular danger of “the Irish.” It’s preposterous.

Adam Harris: The education deserts of rural America

The authors write that they were “at the mercy of the choices made by the researchers who collected, sorted, classified, and tabulated their results.” But reading between the lines, the authors’ working definition of rural often seems to be “a not-so-nice place where white people live,” irrespective of whether that place is a tiny hamlet or a small city. Some of the most jaw-dropping instances of this come when the authors discuss what they would have you believe is rural America’s bigoted assault on local libraries. “The American Library Association tracked 1,269 efforts to ban books in libraries in 2022,” Schaller and Waldman note. “Many of these efforts occurred in rural areas, where libraries have become a target of controversy over books with LGBTQ+ themes or discussions of racism.” The authors detail attacks on a number of libraries: in Llano, Texas; Ashtabula County, Ohio; Craighead County, Arkansas; Maury County, Tennessee; Boundary County, Idaho; and Jamestown, Michigan.

But half of these locations—Craighead County, Maury County, and Jamestown—do not seem to qualify as rural. What the authors call “rural Jamestown, Michigan ,” scores a 1 out of 10 on one of the most popular metrics, the RUCA , used to measure rurality (1 being most urban), and is a quick commute away from the city of Grand Rapids.

That Schaller and Waldman so artfully dodged defining what they mean by rural is a shame for a host of reasons, not the least of which is that the question of who is rural is complex and fascinating. Scholars in rural studies make a distinction between subjective rural identity and objective rural residence—in other words, seeing yourself as rural versus living in a place that is geographically rural according to metrics like RUCA. The thing is, rural identity and rural residence are very, very different. Though Schaller and Waldman mention this distinction briefly in their authors’ note, they do not meaningfully explore it. One political scientist I spoke with, Utah Valley University’s Zoe Nemerever, recently co-authored a paper comparing rural self-identification to residence and found a stunning result: “A minority of respondents who described their neighborhood as rural actually live in an area considered rural.” Her study found that 72 percent of people—at minimum—who saw themselves as living in a rural place did not live in a rural place at all.

It turns out I am one of those people. I grew up in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, an 88 percent white enclave in the southward center of the state. Eighteen minutes and nine miles to the east, you hit the capital city of Harrisburg, which has the best used bookstore in the tristate area. Nineteen minutes and 13 miles away to the west, you hit the game lands, where I spent my teenage years playing hooky and hunting in thick, hard-green mountains. Mechanicsburg feels urban, suburban, and rural all at once. There are strip malls and car dealerships. There are trailer parks and farms with beat-to-hell farmhouses. There are nice suburban neighborhoods with McMansions. My high school had a Future Farmers of America chapter and gave us the first day of deer season off. The final week of my senior year, a kid unballed his fist in the parking lot to show me a bag of heroin. Another wore bow ties and ended up at Harvard.

What do you call a place like that? It was both nice and not-nice. Somewhere and nowhere. Once in college, a professor made a wry joke: Describing a fictional town in a story, he quipped, “It’s the kind of place you see a sign for on the highway, but no one is actually from there.” He paused, racking his brain for an example. “Like Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.”

I tend to think of myself as having a comparatively “rural” identity for a variety of reasons: because Mechanicsburg was more rural when I was growing up. Because both sides of my family are from deeply rural places: Mathias, West Virginia (where 100 percent of the county population is rural), and Huntingdon, Pennsylvania (74 percent rural). Because, since the age of 10, I have spent nearly all my free time hunting or fishing, mostly in unambiguously rural areas that are a short drive from where I live. Because people like that professor tend to view my hometown as a place that is so irrelevant, it barely exists. So when Nemerever looked up data on Mechanicsburg and told me it had a RUCA score of 1 and was considered metropolitan—like Schaller and Waldman’s erroneous library examples—I was genuinely surprised. I’d made the same mistake about my own hometown that Schaller and Waldman had about Jamestown, Michigan.

Scholars who study rural identity say that common misperceptions like this are why defining rural is so important. “Researchers should be highly conscious of what ‘rural’ means when they want to measure relevant social, psychological, and political correlates,” a study of “non-rural rural identifiers” by Kristin Lunz Trujillo, a political-science professor at the University of South Carolina, warns. “Rurality can be a social identity that includes a broad group categorization, even including people who do not currently live in a rural area.”

Schaller and Waldman might have understood these nuances—and not repeatedly misidentified rural areas—if they’d meaningfully consulted members of the rural-studies community. In a portion of their acknowledgments section, the authors thank researchers and journalists in the field who “directed our attention to findings of relevance for our inquiry.” I contacted all 10 of these people, hoping to better understand what kind of input Schaller and Waldman sought from subject-matter experts. One said he was satisfied with the way his work had been acknowledged, and another did not respond to my message. Seven reported only a few cursory email exchanges with the authors about the subject of the book and were surprised to find that they had been thanked at all.

Although it is not unusual for authors to thank people they do not know or corresponded with only briefly, it is quite telling that not a single person I spoke with in rural studies—with the exception of the Wilmington College rural historian Keith Orejel, who said he was disappointed that his feedback did not seem to influence the book—said these men sought out their expertise in a serious way, circulated drafts of the book, or simply ran its controversial argument by them in detail.

T he more significant problem with White Rural Rage is its analysis of the threat of political violence. A core claim of the book is that rural Americans are disproportionately likely to support or potentially commit violence that threatens American democracy. “Violent or not, anti-democratic sentiments and behaviors come in many forms and emerge from all over the nation,” Schaller and Waldman claim. “But rural Whites pose a unique threat.” The sections where the authors attempt to defend this assertion, however, contain glaring mistakes.

Schaller and Waldman describe the supposed threat to democracy posed by “constitutional sheriffs”—members of a right-wing sheriffs organization —in rural counties. But the authors offer no proof that these sheriffs are more likely to work in rural places. They cite an article about “rogue sheriffs elected in rural counties” that is not about rural sheriffs. And, in what Nemerever described to me as “an egregious misrepresentation and professional malpractice,” Schaller and Waldman cite two articles about “constitutional sheriffs” that do not contain the words constitutional sheriff . Schaller and Waldman also share an anecdote about the antidemocratic adventures of “the sheriff of rural Johnson County, Kansas” as proof of the organization’s dangerous influence. They neglect to mention that Johnson County is thoroughly metropolitan and a short drive from Kansas City. Per the 2020 census, it is not simply Kansas’s most populous county; it is the least rural county in the entire state and one of the least rural in the entire country. It also flipped to Joe Biden in 2020 after Trump won it in 2016. (Schaller and Waldman acknowledged this mistake in an email to The Atlantic ; they said they had looked up the information for Johnson County, Arkansas, which is rural. They said they will correct the error in future editions of the book.)

Antonia Hitchens: Like Uber, but for militias

The authors cite an article titled “The Rise of Political Violence in the United States” to support their claim that the threat of political violence is particularly acute in rural America. However, that article directly contradicts that claim. “Political violence in the United States has been greatest in suburbs where Asian American and Hispanic American immigration has been growing fastest, particularly in heavily Democratic metropoles surrounded by Republican-dominated rural areas,” the author, Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, notes. “These areas, where white flight from the 1960s is meeting demographic change, are areas of social contestation. They are also politically contested swing districts.” Schaller and Waller claim, too, that “rural residents are more likely to favor violence over democratic deliberation to solve political disputes,” but the article they cite as evidence discusses neither political violence nor democratic deliberation.

This pattern continues when the authors rattle off a list of violent extremists—including the Pizzagate gunman and a pair of men who plotted to capture Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer—implying that these instances are proof of the unique dangers of “rural” people. But these men are not rural. They’re all from metropolitan areas with RUCA scores of 1 or 2, situated in counties that are also metropolitan. Time and time again, Schaller and Waldman warp the evidence to deflect blame away from metro areas, onto rural ones.

Nowhere is this shifting of blame more apparent than in Schaller and Waldman’s assertion that rural Americans “are overrepresented among those with insurrectionist tendencies.” As one review of the book notes, Schaller and Waldman marshal a report by the political scientist Robert Pape as evidence of this claim. But they completely misunderstand the point of Pape’s study. When I contacted Pape to ask whether he thought that his research had been misused, he was unequivocal.

He directed me to the slide in his report cited by Schaller and Waldman to back up their claims. Schaller and Waldman rely on the slide to point out, correctly, that 27 percent of Americans with insurrectionist views are rural and that these views are slightly overrepresented among rural people. However, they ignore what Pape explicitly described, in big bold letters, as the report’s “#1 key finding”: that there are approximately 21 million potential insurrectionists in the United States—people who believe both that the 2020 election was stolen and that restoring Trump to the presidency by force is justified—and they are “mainly urban.” The authors fail to explain why we should be more worried about the 5.67 million hypothetical rural insurrectionists than the 15.33 million who live in urban and suburban areas, have more resources, made up the bulk of January 6 participants, and are the primary danger, according to Pape’s report.

“They are giving the strong impression that our study is supporting their conclusion, when this is false,” Pape told me. He added that this isn’t a matter of subjective interpretation. The political scientist stretched his arms so that his right and left hands were in opposite corners of the Zoom screen: “Here is their argument. Here is their data. And there’s a gulf in between.”

Pape told me that he had been worried about this book from the moment he saw the authors discussing it on Morning Joe and describing what they call “the fourfold, interconnected threat that white rural voters pose to the country.” “This is a tragedy for the country,” Pape said, “because they’re grossly underestimating the threat to our democracy.” He went on to say that “the real tragedy would be if the DHS, the FBI, political leaders took this book seriously,” because law enforcement and government officials would be focusing their limited resources on the wrong areas. Even as Schaller and Waldman accuse the media of not paying enough attention to the antidemocratic dangers of the far right, the authors are the ones who are not taking this threat seriously. By shining a spotlight on a small part of the insurrectionist movement, White Rural Rage risks distracting the public from the bigger dangers.

A rlie Hochschild , a celebrated sociologist and the author of Strangers in Their Own Land and a forthcoming book on Appalachia, struck a plaintive note in an email to me about White Rural Rage : “When I think of those I’ve come to know in Pike County, Kentucky—part of the nation’s whitest and second poorest congressional district—I imagine that many would not see themselves in this portrait.” She added that these Kentuckians would no doubt “feel stereotyped by books that talk of ‘rural white rage,’ by people who otherwise claim to honor ‘diversity.’”

Kathy Cramer, author of The Politics of Resentment , a key work in the field that is cited by Schaller and Waldman, told me simply: “The question of our time is not who are the bad Americans, but what is wrong with our systems—our government, our economy, our modes of communication—that means that so many people feel unseen, unheard, and disrespected by the people in charge? And what can we do, constructively, about that?” It is a good question. The authors of White Rural Rage might have written a fine book had they taken it seriously.

“The scholars who have criticized us aren’t bothered by our methods; they’re disturbed by our message,” Schaller and Waldman wrote in a statement to The Atlantic . “One of our critics, Kristin Lunz Trujillo, said in response to our book, ‘we need to be careful as scholars to not stereotype or condescend to white rural America in a way that erodes trust and widens divisions.’ Though we would insist in the strongest possible terms that we engage in neither stereotyping nor condescension, we nevertheless find that a revealing comment: Rather than a statement about what the facts are or the scholarship reveals, it’s a declaration of a political and professional agenda.”

Schaller and Waldman also took issue with my criticism of the book on social media and in this article. “Like many of our critics,” they wrote, I “would apparently rather apologize for the revanchist attitudes among many white rural Americans than speak honestly about the serious threats facing our secular, pluralist, constitutional democracy.”

This book will only further erode American confidence in the media and academia at a moment when faith in these institutions is already at an all-time low . And it will likely pour gasoline on rural Americans’ smoldering resentment, a resentment that is in no small part driven by the conviction that liberal elites both misunderstand and despise them. White Rural Rage provides a rather substantial piece of evidence to that score, and shows that rural folks’ suspicions are anything but “fake news.” However, this is only part of the story. And it is not the most important part.

Schaller and Waldman are right: There are real threats to American democracy, and we should be worried about political violence. But by erroneously pinning the blame on white rural Americans, they’ve distracted the public from the real danger. The threat we must contend with today is not white rural rage, but white urban and suburban rage .

Instead of reckoning with the ugly fact that a threat to our democracy is emerging from right-wing extremists in suburban and urban areas, the authors of White Rural Rage contorted studies and called unambiguously metro areas “rural” so that they could tell an all-too-familiar story about scary hillbillies. Perhaps this was easier than confronting the truth: that the call is coming from inside the house. It is not primarily the rural poor, but often successful , white metropolitan men who imperil our republic.

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A Gender Theorist Who Just Wants Everyone to Get Along

Judith Butler’s new book, “Who’s Afraid of Gender?,” tries to turn down the heat on an inflamed argument.

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By Jennifer Szalai

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WHO’S AFRAID OF GENDER?, by Judith Butler

As the example of Judith Butler shows, the boons of intellectual celebrity come at a cost. Yes, your work will command the kind of attention that would be the envy of most scholars; but the substance of that work will get eclipsed by your name, and your name will trigger a reaction in people who have never read a single thing you wrote. Throw some misogyny into the mix, and the most scornful attacks can take a lurid turn — even (or especially) if, like Butler, you identify as nonbinary. In 2017, when Butler visited Brazil for a conference on democracy, far-right protesters burned an effigy of Butler dressed in a pink bra and a witch hat.

Despite its notoriously opaque prose, Butler’s best-known book, “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity” (1990), has been both credited and blamed for popularizing a multitude of ideas, including some that Butler doesn’t propound, like the notions that biology is entirely unreal and that everybody experiences gender as a choice.

So Butler set out to clarify a few things with “Who’s Afraid of Gender?,” a new book that arrives at a time when gender has “become a matter of extraordinary alarm.” In plain (if occasionally plodding) English, Butler, who uses they/them pronouns, repeatedly affirms that facts do exist, that biology does exist, that plenty of people undoubtedly experience their own gender as “immutable.”

What Butler questions instead is how such facts get framed, and how such framing structures our societies and how we live.

Any framework conditions norms and expectations. A binary framework, Butler says, is necessarily complicated by a more expansive view of gender — one that actually takes into account the variety of human experience and expression. “To refuse gender is, sadly, to refuse to encounter that complexity,” Butler writes, “the complexity that one finds in contemporary life across the world.”

Butler, who was trained as a philosopher, finds it curious that their dense, jargon-filled work has been invested with an almost supernatural authority. Conservative Christians have been especially fervent in their insistence that scholars like Butler are corrupting the youth, as if mere exposure to a text amounts to ideological inculcation: “Gender critics imagine that their opponents read gender theory as they themselves read the Bible.”

“Who’s Afraid of Gender?” started with that burned effigy in Brazil, when Butler realized that gender had become a bugaboo — or “phantasm,” as the book puts it — for a “rights-stripping” movement that is gaining traction worldwide and is “authoritarian at its core.” This “anti-gender ideology movement” targets trans and queer people; it also targets reproductive freedoms. It depicts sexed identity as something that is not only natural, obvious and unquestionable, but also zero-sum; it asserts that tolerance means exclusion, not inclusion — that advocates of “gender ideology” want to take rights away from everyone else.

“It is not possible to fully reconstruct the arguments used by the anti-gender ideology movement because they do not hold themselves to standards of consistency or coherence,” Butler writes. Pope Francis, despite being known for some of his progressive views, has compared gender theory to nuclear annihilation and the indoctrination of Hitler Youth.

But incoherence can be powerful. So-called gender ideology has been portrayed as both a licentious force and a totalitarian one — stoking personal liberty and steamrolling it at the same time. The church draws menacing connections between gender theory and pedophilia and harm to children. Butler finds such sanctimony especially rich: “In this standoff between church and feminism and LGBTQIA+ rights, where has the child molestation actually taken place?”

Butler makes ample use of such rhetorical questions. The tone of “Who’s Afraid of Gender?” is mostly calm, the argument methodical, the mockery gentle. A chapter on the incendiary subject of trans-exclusionary feminism focuses on debates in Britain. Butler calls it “stunning and sad” that feminists who consider themselves progressive could find common cause with a “new fascism,” a movement that is bent on imposing the kind of patriarchal hierarchy that feminism has always opposed. Butler asks trans-exclusionary feminists who argue that “gender mutability” amounts to an attack on “womanhood” to notice that their own bodies and genders are still intact: “Has anything truly been lost or taken away?”

Feminists, Butler says, need to keep their eyes on the prize: “a world in which we can move and breathe and love without fear of violence.” Coalitions have always been necessary to feminism, and they have always been difficult. “Coalitions do not require mutual love,” Butler writes. “They require only a shared insight that oppressive forces can be defeated by acting together and moving forward with difficult differences without insisting on their ultimate resolution.”

It’s certainly a hopeful sentiment — one that stands out in a debate in which hopeful sentiments often seem exceedingly rare. Conversations about gender have become so inflamed that the task, Butler says, “is to slow the entire public discussion down.” Indeed, since “Who’s Afraid of Gender?” was published, some critics have faulted Butler for turning the temperature down too low — for making an argument that is “tepid” and “uninspiringly careful” ; for stating the obvious by training such mighty brainpower on “the silliest figments of conservative fantasies” ; for being so committed to coalition building that the book lands on “a needlessly conciliatory position.”

Yet the same book has also been excoriated for doing the exact opposite: for demonizing opponents and for dismissing them as “fascist-adjacent.” It’s a mark of how charged the subject is that Butler’s book-length intervention, their bid “to slow the entire public discussion down,” has been received as both a tame peace offering and an outrageous insult.

And perhaps there’s a vacuum left by this book precisely because Butler, in a bid to bring people together, generally steers clear of some of the most inflammatory nodes of the debate. They easily challenge red-state directives to investigate parents seeking gender-affirming care for their children, which are patently cruel and controlling; but they don’t really get into the fierce disagreements among people, including those who want to support their children, on what that care should entail and when it should happen.

On a recent episode of the podcast “Why Is This Happening,” Butler was asked how they thought about such questions. “I think gender-affirming care is, broadly speaking, or should be, a commitment to listening to what young people are saying and trying to give them a safe environment in which to explore everything they need to explore,” Butler said. “I don’t think it should be accelerated, in a panicked way. I also am very opposed to it being blocked.” It’s a generous, open-minded answer; but it also sounds like a bit of a cop-out.

Toward the end of the book, Butler makes a few obligatory remarks about the importance of continuing the conversation, about the need to listen to one another, about the dangers of shutting people down. “We cannot censor each other’s positions just because we do not want to hear them,” they declare, somewhat cryptically, issuing this free-speech directive at everyone in general and therefore no one in particular. Still, I appreciated Butler’s commitment to holding open a space for thinking. “In the grip of a phantasm, it is hard to think,” Butler writes. “And yet thinking and imagining have never been more important.”

WHO’S AFRAID OF GENDER? | By Judith Butler | Farrar, Straus & Giroux | 308 pp. | $30

Jennifer Szalai is the nonfiction book critic for The Times. More about Jennifer Szalai

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'the familiar' is a romance, coming-of-age tale, and a story about fighting for more.

Gabino Iglesias

Leigh Bardugo's The Familiar is an entertaining slice of speculative fiction wrapped in historical fiction and delivered with heavy doses of magic and wit.

At once a love story, a coming-of-age tale full of secrets and tension, and a narrative about wanting more and doing anything to get it, The Familiar is a solid entry into Bardugo's already impressive oeuvre.

Luzia Cotado is a scullion with callused hands who sleeps on a grimy floor and constantly dreams of a better life where she has more money, complete freedom, and love. Luiza works for a couple who are struggling to maintain their social status, so she doesn't make much and owns almost nothing. To help her get through her days and take care of menial tasks, Luzia uses a bit of magic, which she keeps secret from everyone.

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Luzia learned how to perform little miracles from her aunt, a strange woman and the lover of a very powerful man. When Luzia's mistress discovers her servant can perform "milagritos," she sees it as the perfect opportunity to improve her social status and forces Luzia to work her magic for their dinner guests. But what begins as entertainment soon turns into something much more serious when Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain's king, enters the scene and sees Luzia's magic as an opportunity for himself.

The king is desperate to improve his military prowess, and Pérez thinks Luzia's powers might be the thing that puts him, once again, in the king's good graces. There will be a competition, and if Luzia wins, everyone around her might gain something. But winning won't be easy, and Luzia fears her newfound fame will get her and her Jewish blood in the Inquisition's crosshairs. Surrounded by people with secret agendas, learning to use her magic, caught in a new romance with a mysterious undead man, and an unknown pawn in a plethora of self-serving machinations, Luzia will soon need more than a bit of magic to survive.

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The Familiar drags readers into a world of servitude, magic, power struggles, and intrigue. There isn't a single character in this story that doesn't have a secret agenda or something to win—or lose!—that's directly tied to Luzia. The desires of some clash with those of others, and those battles slowly make the narrative more complex while simultaneously increasing the tension and the sense of doom. Despite the many elements at play and the bafflingly large cast of characters she juggles here, Bardugo delivers every twist and turn with clarity, plenty of humor, and charming wittiness, the latter of which fills the novel with superb, snappy dialogue that shows Luzia lacks everything except a quick intelligence and a sharp tongue. Also, while many of the plot elements here like the magic battle, someone being trapped by a curse, and an impossible love are far from new, Bardugo mixes them well together and manages to make them feel fresh.

Known mostly for her Shadow and Bone trilogy, the Six of Crows duology, and the King of Scars duology—all of which are part of her Grishaverse universe—Bardugo delivers an entertaining standalone here with a strong female protagonist that's very easy to root for. Through Luzia, we get a critique of religion, a look into the lives of those who have no option but to serve to survive, and a romance that's as full of passion and sensuality as well as lies and treachery. Lastly, the magic system Bardugo created, which is Jewish magic based on phrases sung or spoken in mixed languages, is interesting and allows the author to talk about otherness without straying from the core of her narrative.

While Bardugo accomplishes a lot in this novel, the crowning jewel of The Familiar is Luzia, a memorable character whose most personal aspirations possess an outstanding universality. We watch her suffer, emerge from her cocoon, fall in love, and then receive her ultimatum: "Your life, your aunt's life, your lover's future all hang in the balance. So do your best or I will be forced to do my worst." Through every single one of those steps, we want her to triumph and to learn to hone her powers, and that connection keeps the pages turning.

At times the endless descriptions of clothing and the increasing number of characters and subplots—some with a satisfying arc and some that just fizzle out—seem a bit excessive and threaten the pacing of the story. But Bardugo is always in control and her masterful use of tension — and that, along with her talent for great dialogue, more than overpower the novel's small shortcomings.

The Familiar is full of "milagritos" and pain, of betrayal and resentment, of fear and desire. However, the novel's most powerful element is hope; Luzia is all about it, and her feelings are so powerful they're contagious. That connections makes this a book that's hard to put down.

Gabino Iglesias is an author, book reviewer and professor living in Austin, Texas. Find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @Gabino_Iglesias .

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YouTube Kids Series ‘Tab Time’ Debuts New App, Children’s Book Series and Online Store (EXCLUSIVE)

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YouTube’s popular “ Tab Time ” series, starring “America’s mom” and Emmy-winning host Tabitha Brown, just got bigger.

Brown and creative studio Kids at Play have announced the launch of the “Tab Time World” app plus an all-new children’s book series and online shop as an expansion of the Emmy-winning young children’s series “Tab Time,” co-created by Brown and Kids at Play founder Jason Berger.

The eBooks and App, developed in partnership with Google Kids Space, will be available for free exclusively on Google Kids Space and Google Play for a limited time. Additionally, the books will be available in the “Tab Time World” app and everywhere eBooks are sold. “‘Tab Time’ is special to so many of us and expanding keeps our hearts and minds open for love to grow! Parents and kids love smart devices and to give them self-love and learning tools from ‘Tab Time’ in books and apps was in perfect alignment,” Brown says of the new offerings. “I’m excited for families to get to experience it all together! The more we gather with learning and love, the better the world will be! That’s what ‘Tab Time’ is all about and that makes me so excited.”

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Brown narrates the new interactive comic picture series, which was written by “Tab Time” showrunner Sean Presant and illustrated by “Tab Time” animator Michael Scanlon. The first two books in the series are “Avi to the Rescue” and “Lenny and the Truck-Driving Dinosaurs,” each based on characters from the hybrid live-action/animated series.

Brown notes that upcoming stories in the book series will follow episodes from the YouTube series.

“The stories will piggyback off the episodes. Like when we feel afraid, or when we make a mistake, that’s really an oops-ortunity. We’re helping kids give themselves space and time to grow, learn, respect and love themselves and others,” she says.

Additionally, the show has launched an official store on shop.tabtime.tv , featuring “Tab Time” themed backpacks, shirts, hoodies, hats, bibs, onesies, sippy cups, blankets, bags and more.

“The shop is really a response to demand. When we first launched ‘Tab Time,’ parents and kids were creating their own amazing DIY-style costumes and such. So, with the shop, we are providing an official source with quality materials and fun artwork for parents and kids who want to bring the digital world of ‘Tab Time’ to their physical reality,” Berger says.

Tabitha Brown is represented by CAA and Brecheen, Feldman, Breimer, Silver & Thompson, LLP. Jason Berger is represented by UTA, Artists First and Rothenberg, Mohr and Binder, LLP. Sean Presant is repped by Nick Terry at World Builder Entertainment. “Tab Time World” was developed by Kids at Play and Space Inch.

Watch a visual tour about the new “Tab Time World” app below.

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Polk County Public Schools set to refine policy on responding to book challenges

Polk County Public Schools is considering a new policy on handling challenges to books held in libraries and classrooms.

Superintendent Frederick Heid and the Polk County School Board discussed the proposed policy during a work session Tuesday. The draft largely responds to laws passed by the Florida Legislature since the district first adopted its policy in October 2022, as well as rules from the Florida Board of Education.

Among the changes from the current policy, the draft allows challenges to books in classroom libraries, not only in schoolwide libraries, as well as material used in classes or on assigned reading lists. The proposal also adds references to state laws defining prohibited sexual content.

The draft reflects one of three options for a revised policy provided by Neola, an education consulting firm contracted by the district.

Stacy Davis, the district’s library services director, said that the staff had made “a significant amount” of revisions in response to suggestions from an initial draft shared with School Board members at their March 19 work session.

Florida has seen a wave of complaints in recent years about books available in public schools, particularly those in libraries. Groups such as Citizens Defending Freedom, a conservative outfit based in Polk County, and Moms for Liberty have led the push, accusing some school districts of giving students access to books they consider to be pornographic or otherwise inappropriate.

Citizens Defending Freedom sued Polk County Public Schools in March over its policies on handling book objections. In an 11-page complaint, the conservative group alleged that the district was not following state law. Jason Geary, a spokesperson for the district, said that the proposed policy changes were not made in response to the lawsuit.

The Florida Legislature has passed bills in the past two sessions directing county school districts on how to manage challenges over books. While Gov. Ron DeSantis has amplified complaints about school materials, he said during this year’s session that some had taken advantage of the process.

The Legislature passed a bill in this year’s session restricting those who reside outside a particular county to one challenge per month of a book in that district’s libraries or classrooms. DeSantis has not yet signed the measure. There have been media reports of activists filing hundreds of challenges in counties where they do not reside.

Expanded grounds for challenges

An agenda item for the work session included the proposed policy, with color-coded suggestions for additions and deletions based on comments from the March 19 session. In one proposed change, anyone submitting a challenge must provide proof of Polk County residency.

Objections are first reviewed by a school principal, who may meet with a teacher, those making the challenge or both “in an attempt to resolve the objection, using an alternative instructional material,” the current policy states. If no resolution is reached that satisfies the challenging party, the principal will refer the matter to a district-level curriculum supervisor.

A proposed addition emphasizes that such a move is intended to initiate the school media committee review process.

The committee then receives a copy of the challenger’s submitted form. A proposed addition to the policy reads: “The school committee makes the recommendation to retain or remove the material.”

A list of reasons for objections inserts references to state laws defining pornographic content and descriptions of sexual conduct. The policy adds another basis for challenges — that a book “is inappropriate for the grade level and age group for which the material is used.”

In a proposed addition, any book facing a claim that it is pornographic or depicts sexual conduct must be removed within five school days and remain unavailable to students until the challenge is resolved.

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Parents have the right to read passages from any book that is subject to an objection, the policy states. If the district denies parental access because of content considered pornographic or sexual under state law or a Board of Education rule, the district must discontinue use of the material, a suggested revision says.

The draft clarifies that the superintendent must notify the School Board of a book complaint and then appoint a review committee. The proposal slightly alters the potential composition of such a committee.

Up to half of the panel would be parents of students with access to the material, instructional staff members (including certified library media specialists and English/language arts teachers) and non-employees with expertise in the subject matter. The draft deletes a mention of assigning one or more School Board members to a review committee.

In a proposed addition, the district would provide public notices of review committee meetings, which would be open to the public.

Just as the draft expands the criteria for challenges to include claims of pornography or sexual descriptions, committees would consider those elements in evaluating books, under the proposed revisions. Material found in violation could be removed pending the committee’s recommendation to the superintendent.

Committee recommendations would be due in writing to the superintendent within 15 business days following its formation, and the superintendent would report to the challenger within five days after that. An objector could then appeal the decision in writing within 15 days. The superintendent would forward the appeal and all relevant material to the School Board within five business days.

The School Board would then review the case during a publicly noticed meeting, taking a vote on whether to uphold the challenge. If board members find that the challenged book contains material barred under state law, it will be removed altogether or made unavailable to students in grades for which it is considered unsuitable.

The draft includes a final added section describing the rights of a parent who disagrees with the School Board’s decision. The challenger may ask the Florida commissioner of education to appoint a special magistrate, a lawyer with experience in administrative law, who would make a recommendation to the Board of Education within 30 days.

The Board of Education would then vote to approve or reject the recommendation at its next scheduled meeting. The school district is responsible for covering the fees generated by appointment of the special magistrate, the draft says, in keeping with state law.

CDF: Not enough change

Acknowledging a new state law, the proposed policy compels the district to file annual reports to the Florida Department of Education documenting all book challenges and the resulting actions.

The School Board must vote on all changes to policy. The earliest the proposal could be discussed at a meeting is June 11, Geary said.

In its lawsuit, CDF criticized the makeup of district’s review committees, said its meetings were not properly advertised and claimed that the district had not followed its own guidelines in reviewing appeals.

"We're happy that the school board is willing to change to their policy, however in the last two years the Board has never once followed their existing policy,” Anthony Sabatini, the lawyer who filed the lawsuit on behalf of CDF, said by email. “There needs to be substantial changes to bring the current policy in line with Florida law and statutes."

Robert Goodman, executive director of CDF's Polk County chapter, added: "While we are thankful that the Polk County School Board is considering potential changes to their policy, we are not seeing the changes needed to protect minor aged children from accessing books containing graphic rape, pedophilia, bestiality, incest and worse. If a parent wants their child to read about these subjects, they are able to purchase them."

Stephanie Yocum, president of the Polk Education Association, an employee union, attended Tuesday’s work session and said the policy changes seemed to be mostly necessary alignments with state law. Yocum criticized the Florida Legislature and DeSantis for imposing what she called unnecessary restrictions on schools and teachers.

Yocum said that many teachers in Polk County have already removed their classroom library because complying with state laws and rules has become burdensome. The state requires that all such books match lists of approved materials.

“I think this is just another example of our state legislators and our governor not letting home rule do its thing,” Yocum said. “It’s just one more interference with how local government can operate and function.”

Gary White can be reached at [email protected] or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.

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Review: 'Educated,' by Tara Westover
EDUCATED A Memoir By Tara Westover 335 pp. Random House. $28. ... Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review's podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world.
Educated by Tara Westover review
Educated is published by Hutchinson. To order a copy for £12.74 (RRP £14.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only.
Educated by Tara Westover: Summary and reviews
Book Summary. Winner of the 2018 BookBrowse Nonfiction Award. An unforgettable memoir about a young girl who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University. Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared ...
Educated by Tara Westover
Ultimately, Educated is a rewarding odyssey you do not want to miss. Review first posted - 3/23/18 Published - 2/20/18 November 29, 2018 - Educated is named as one of The 10 Best Books of 2018 December 2019 - Educated is named winner of the 2018 Goodreads Choice Award for memoirs, beating out Michelle Obamas's blockbuster hit, Becoming.
Book review Educated Tara Westover
0:04. 1:00. Tara Westover is living proof that some people are flat-out, boots-always-laced-up indomitable. Her new book, Educated (Random House, 334 pp., ★★★★ out of four), is a ...
"Educated," by Tara Westover
Alexandra Schwartz reviews "Educated," a memoir by Tara Westover, about her decision to leave home and get a formal education, which amounted to a rebellion against her Mormon parents ...
Educated by Tara Westover
Book Review: Educated by Tara Westover. Educated is a memoir of the growing up of Tara Westover. The book is split into three parts: growing up and her childhood; College, predominantly at BYU; and, further education and the cracking of familial relationships. This book, I found, was largely an exploration of her familial relationships and the ...
EDUCATED
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance. 28. Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006.
Review: Tara Westover's 'Educated: A Memoir'
Tara Westover's one-of-a-kind memoir is about the shaping of a mind, yet page after page describes the maiming of bodies—not just hers, but the heads, limbs, and torsos of her parents and six ...
Educated by Tara Westover review: An extraordinary Mormon upbringing
Educated by Tara Westover review: An extraordinary Mormon upbringing recounted with evocative lyricism Tara Westover hadn't heard about the Holocaust, WWII or Martin Luther King until university
Family's Response: Educated by Tara Westover
Book review and synopsis for Educated by Tara Westover, a personal journey about a childhood in a survivalist home. Synopsis. Educated is a memoir by Tara Westover, a woman who grows up as the youngest of seven in a rural Idaho Mormon community. She and her siblings were all born at home and are homeschooled, and her parents are deeply ...
Educated by Tara Westover
Book Review: Educated by Tara Westover. Educated by Tara Westover is an anguished story about growing up in the mountains of Idaho in a fundamentalist Mormon/survivalist family led by a father convinced that the socialist government in every respect was evil.
Review: Educated by Tara Westover
Educated is a raw, emotional, and at times, heartbreaking account of Tara Westover's life. Tara endured both physical and verbal abuse at the hands of family members and saw her education, as well as her overall wellbeing, neglected by her parents. Throughout the book, she strives to deliver an unbiased account of events, going so far as to ...
Book review: Educated by Tara Westover
In a nutshell, Tara's story is about escaping from constrictive, predefined belief systems to achieve liberation. However, the path to education is treacherous, gut-wrenching, and filled with uncertainty. She writes, " My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute.
Book review of "Educated" by Tara Westover
Educated was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the New York Times Book Review and one of the best books of the year by many other publications. It is definitely that. For related reading. You'll find this book on The 40 best books of the decade from 2010-19. You may also care to take a look at my post, 14 excellent memoirs.
Educated Book Review, a Memoir by Tara Westover
EDUCATED BOOK REVIEW - RATING. As I was reading the memoir I thought I was going to rate it a 4. However, I became increasingly invested in Tara's coming-of-age story, giving it a 5 out of 5 stars on Goodreads. If you enjoyed Wild or Angela's Ashes, and enjoy narratives of misery and triumph, I recommend reading Educated by Tara Westover.
Educated (book)
tarawestover .com /book. Educated is a 2018 memoir by the American author Tara Westover. Westover recounts overcoming her survivalist Mormon family in order to go to college, and emphasizes the importance of education in enlarging her world. She details her journey from her isolated life in the mountains of Idaho to completing a PhD program in ...
Review: Educated, by Tara Westover
Review: Educated, by Tara Westover. by Mark Ward Dec 14, 2018 Books, Culture, Worldview 4 comments. My heart goes out to Tara Westover. I rooted for her and felt defensive for her during 100% of the story. Other people's epistemological sins harmed her. ... The book review and the previous comments are spot on! I think this is a good reminder ...
Educated is even better than you've heard
Book Reviews. About Bill Gates. Account Deactivation. Click the link below to begin the account deactivation process. ... (Full disclosure: she was a Gates Scholar, which I didn't even know until I reached that part of the book.) Educated is an amazing story, and I get why it's spent so much time on the top of the New York Times bestseller ...
Review of "Educated"
Review of "Educated". Educated is the emotional and thought-provoking memoir of a young woman who grew up in a dysfunctional family. Tara Westover's family was physically abusive, emotionally abusive, and verbally abusive. This makes her memoir a poignant and inspiring story about a girl who fought her way out of the backwoods to Harvard.
Educated by Tara Westover: 9780399590528
About Educated #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
Book Review: Tara Westover's 'Educated' Shares Too Much, Too Soon
There is much to be shocked by in Educated, Westover's 2019 New York Times bestseller. Truth is often stranger than fiction, and Westover's book proves it; much of her story is frighteningly ...
'White Rural Rage' Is an Utterly Misleading Book
R age is the subject of a new book by the political scientist Tom Schaller and the journalist Paul Waldman. White Rural Rage, specifically.In 255 pages, the authors chart the racism, homophobia ...
Book Review: 'Who's Afraid of Gender?,' by Judith Butler
Amid a surge in book bans, the most challenged books in the United States in 2023 continued to focus on the experiences of L.G.B.T.Q. people or explore themes of race.
Review of 'Is College Worth It?' (opinion)
David Wippman and Glenn C. Altschuler review a new book taking on the "myth" of the college wage premium. Public confidence in colleges and universities has reached a historic low. In a 2023 Gallup poll, only 36 percent of Americans expressed confidence in higher education, down from 57 percent in 2015. Among Republicans, confidence has dropped 20 percentage points since 2018, to only 19 ...
Leigh Bardugo's 'The Familiar' book review : NPR
Book Reviews 'The Familiar' is a romance, coming-of-age tale, and a story about fighting for more . April 11, 2024 3:02 PM ET. By . Gabino Iglesias Enlarge this image. Flatiron Books
'Tab Time' Debuts App, Children's Book Series and Online Store
Additionally, the show has launched an official store on shop.tabtime.tv, featuring "Tab Time" themed backpacks, shirts, hoodies, hats, bibs, onesies, sippy cups, blankets, bags and more ...
Polk school district refining policy on responding to book challenges
The draft reflects one of three options for a revised policy provided by Neola, an education consulting firm contracted by the district. Stacy Davis, the district's library services director ...

Educated by Tara Westover review – escape from a Mormon fundamentalist family

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