Tara Westover was raised in isolation and homeschooled by her survivalist Mormon parents in Buck’s Peak, Idaho. At the age of 17, with no formal education, she started college at Brigham Young University, eventually studying abroad and completing a PhD in history from Cambridge.
Her struggles to overcome the abuse and closed-mindedness of her family and seek an education in a wider world are chronicled in her 2018 memoir Educated, which spent more than 100 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was shortlisted for the Jean Stein Book Award from PEN America, two National Book Critics Circle Awards, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
For those who found Westover’s journey “riveting” (The Economist), “resonant” (New York Times Book Review), “one-of-a-kind” (The Atlantic), “heartbreaking” (USA Today), “nuanced” (Financial Times), and “fascinating” (Newsday), these 8 books about overcoming adversity and the importance of education are sure to be just as moving and inspiring.
It Takes a School
Once a cutthroat hedge fund manager, Jonathan Starr left behind a life of luxury to embark upon a unique mission: found a school in Somaliland, a breakaway nation in one of the world’s most economically challenged landscapes. It is difficult to regard the result as anything short of a success story, as Abaarso School of Science and Technology has sent more than 60 of its graduates to elite colleges and prep schools, including MIT, Harvard, and Georgetown. “Starr is proud of his accomplishments,” says Kirkus Reviews of this astounding book, “and he deserves to be.”
Up from Slavery
Originally serialized in a Christian newspaper called The Outlook in 1900, Booker T. Washington’s famous autobiography has divided critics but remained a bestseller and a compelling and forceful meditation upon the effects of slavery and its aftermath. In it, he describes his own childhood as a slave during the Civil War, and the obstacles that he had to overcome in order to receive an education at the Hampton Institute, not to mention his efforts to “reassure the White community of the usefulness of educating Black people” through establishing vocational training schools such as the Tuskegee Institute.
Instructions for a Funeral
Booker Prize-nominated author David Means is an “established master of the form” when it comes to short stories (The Guardian), hailed by Joyce Carol Oates as “a master of tense, distilled, quintessentially American prose.” In this collection of new stories, he brings his reputation as one of the best short story writers working today to tales ranging from the tense to the tender, from an FBI stakeout in the 1920s to stories of real estate ventures or serial-killing nurses. Read it to find out why Tara Westover herself raved that “David Means is one of my very favorite writers.”
The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames
Justine Cowan did not know her mother as Dorothy Soames. After her mother’s death, she began a painstaking exploration into the past that would uncover a secret life that she had never known, one that stretched back to the early years of World War II and the halls of the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children, where her mother had grown up as a foundling. The result is a book that “captivates at every turn” (Publishers Weekly) and will give book groups “as much to discuss here as they have with The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, and Educated by Tara Westover” (Booklist).
Front of the Class
“This is a story for every underdog, for everyone who has ever stumbled in life,” raves Jim Eisenreich, former Major League Baseball player. Like Brad Cohen, Eisenreich has Tourette syndrome. In this “remarkable story of a remarkable man” (Midwest Book Review), Cohen chronicles his life as a child with Tourette’s who faced countless challenges to eventually become Georgia’s First Class Teacher of the Year. The result is a “testimony to the indestructibility of the human spirit” (ForeWord Magazine) and a book about the importance of education that is now a Hallmark Hall of Fame Movie Event.
Find Me Unafraid
Counting among their fans the likes of the Clintons, Cory Booker, Gloria Steinem, and Mia Farrow, Kennedy Odede and Jessica Posner had unlikely—and very different—beginnings. Kennedy Odede grew up foraging for food in one of the poorest slums in Kenya. When he was a teenager, he acquired a single soccer ball and set out to change his life, starting a youth empowerment group. Jessica Posner came to Kenya as part of a semester abroad, met Kennedy, and the two fell in love. Since then, they have started the area’s first tuition-free school for girls, and their story is told in this “suspenseful and absorbing” (Publishers Weekly) book about the power of social change.
Hold Fast to Dreams
Joshua Steckel was a college counselor at an expensive private school on New York’s Upper East Side who left it behind to work with low-income students at a public high school in Brooklyn. In this “powerful story of courage and hope that should inspire others to follow trailblazers like Steckel and his students” (Kirkus Reviews), he charts the path of 10 of his students as they struggle to apply for college despite experiencing homelessness, pregnancy, health crises, turbulent home lives, undocumented status, and more to produce an Ida and Studs Terkel Prize-winning tale of overcoming adversity in order to get an education.
Rust
Fresh out of college, Eliese did not want to take a dangerous and thankless job working in a steel mill in the economically depressed region she had hoped to leave behind. Yet, in this “instructive and chastening look at some of the labor on which we depend without understanding or appreciating it” (Washington Examiner), she finds more than she expected in the burning belly of the steel mill. This “beautifully told, nuanced memoir” (Library Journal) is an “insightful and ultimately reassuring take on America’s working class” (Publishers Weekly) as Eliese takes readers along on her journey alongside the people who work with her in the mill, while also exploring her Rust Belt upbringing.
