Tara Westover is a celebrated writer and historian who got her PhD from the University of Cambridge after beginning formal education at seventeen. Her book Educated, a memoir of her upbringing in a survivalist home in rural Idaho, was on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years. Though her parents opposed formal education, she taught herself enough to take the ACT and was accepted into Brigham Young University. She then went on to Trinity College as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, where she earned a doctorate in intellectual history in 2014. Her thesis is entitled "The Family, Morality and Social Science in Anglo-American Cooperative Thought, 1813–1890." In 2019, Time Magazine named Westover one of the 100 Most Influential People, and in 2023, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden. Read more.