Tara Westover

My brother once lit his leg on fire. And after, when the fire was finally out, his leg was covered in third-degree burns. And we made the decision - or my parents did - not to take him to the hospital but to treat that at home with a salve my mother made of comfrey and lobelia.

I spent my summers bottling peaches and my winters rotating supplies. When the World of Men failed, my family would continue on, unaffected.

I had been raised in the mountains of Idaho by a father who distrusted many of the institutions that people take for granted - public education, doctors and hospitals, and the government.

An education is not so much about making a living as making a person.

We think about education as a stepping stone into a higher socio-economic class, into a better job. And it does do those things. But I don't think that's what it really is. I experienced it as getting access to different ideas and perspectives and using them to construct my own mind.

I taught myself algebra and a little grammar, and somehow I scraped a high enough score on the ACT to be admitted to Brigham Young University, even though I had no formal education.

I was 17 the first time I set foot in a classroom, but 10 years later, I would graduate from Cambridge with a Ph.D. 'Educated' is the story of how I came by my education. It is also the story of how I lost my family.

I had been educated in the rhythms of the mountain, rhythms in which change was never fundamental, only cyclical. The same sun appeared each morning, swept over the valley, and dropped behind the peak. The snows that fell in winter always melted in the spring.

Not knowing my birthday had never seemed strange. I knew I'd been born near the end of September, and each year I picked a day, one that didn't fall on a Sunday because it's no fun spending your birthday in church.

Forgiveness isn't just the absence of anger. I think it's also the presence of self-love, when you actually begin to value yourself.

Anger can be a good thing. It's a mechanism that your brain uses to get you out of situations that are bad for you. But in terms of leading a peaceful life, it is not very productive.