Books like educated: a memoir

Tara Westover (born September 1986) is an American memoirist, essayist and historian. Her memoir Educated (2018) debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and was a finalist for a number of national awards, including the LA Times Book Prize, PEN America's Jean Stein Book Award, and two awards from the National Book Critics Circle Award. The New York Times named Educated one of the 10 Best Books of 2018, and in a piece written by Bill Gates, Westover was chosen by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of 2019.

Westover was the youngest of 7 children born in Clifton, Idaho (population 259) to Val and LaRee Westover. Her parents followed a survivalist lifestyle and were suspicious of doctors, hospitals, public schools, and the federal government. As a result, Westover was born at home, delivered by a midwife, never visited a doctor or nurse, and did not receive a birth certificate until she was nine years old. Her father's ideology forbade all pharmaceutical interventions, which meant that Westover and her siblings were not taken to the doctor even for serious injuries sustained in automobile accidents and while working in their father's wrecking yard. Instead, the children were treated at home by their mother who had studied herbalism and other methods of alternative healing.