I mostly read non-fiction. If it’s non-business related, I gauge a book on its quality and value based on whether I recommend it to family and friends. That was the case for Tara Westover’s, Educated, a Memoir, a beautiful, but painful story about a young woman on multiple journeys.
A Few Key Points about Educated
I hesitate on sharing too much about this book. While I liked the ending, the early half of the book was hard to read at times:
- she dealt with physical abuse from one of her brothers – she kept this from her parents
- her mother once told her, “You are not a good person.”
- her father was a survivalist with a twisted worldview
- even had she sought out help, I’m not sure she would have found a refuge
Westover’s story is impactful because of her grit, mental growth, and determination to leave a family she still loved.
Most of us are college-educated, and we take for granted what we know to be true that was taught to us at such a young age. Yet, when Tara arrived at college in her first year, she had never heard of the Holocaust, or the Civil Rights Movement or knew that Europe was a continent.
Isaiah Berlin’s Two Concepts of Liberty
The lecturer tried to clarify. He said positive liberty is self-mastery—the rule of the self, by the self. To have positive liberty, he explained, is to take control of one’s own mind; to be liberated from irrational fears and beliefs, from addictions, superstitions and all other forms of self-coercion.
From the book Educated by Tara Westover
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