Educated
Tara Westover · first published 2018 · ISBN 9780399590528
Westover grew up in a survivalist Idaho family with no classroom education. She taught herself enough to pass college entrance exams at seventeen and eventually earned a PhD from Cambridge University. Her memoir traces the profound displacement of moving from complete isolation into formal education while her family opposed her schooling.
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The Best Books for First-Generation College Students
This book shows the radical transformation education can bring. If your family's relationship to college is strained or skeptical, Westover's story of building an entirely new intellectual life while managing family conflict speaks directly to that tension.