This book is a heart wrenching tale of family, identity, separation, loss, and strength. The fact that the author was raised in a junkyard and ended up getting a doctorate is a testament to her clarity of mind, self-awareness, and strong sense of purpose gained partly from her junkyard life but more so from her intelligence and discernment. I was most impressed by the consistency of the voice in this book. It was such a great retelling of a dangerous and unique childhood. She also treats the topic of Mormonism with great respect, even though her father is a fanatic. As a BYU grad and a woman who spent many summers in the mountains of Idaho with my NRA-capped grandpa, this book resonated with me, and I just devoured every well-crafted word. Amazing.

Tara Westover was raised in a strict Mormon household by her herbalist mother and scrapyard owner father. Her overbearing father has a distrust of the government, education and conventional medicine and the Westover children are all home schooled, which in reality meant working in the family businesses, either facing the daily danger of the scrapyard or helping their mother as the self appointed (untrained) local midwife and herbalist. This book was an eye opening look at an uncoventional upbringing. Now at a distance from the family Tara, can recognise the violence, danger and suspected mental illness that she endured during her family life as a child and young adult. This book is so incredibly well written, you can feel the pull back that the author feels to her family, even as she realises their destructive relationships. An inspirational true story, we follow Tara on a path of self education as she ends up studying for a PHD at Cambridge, but also as she comes to terms emotionally with the scars left by her family. I will be recommending this powerful book to everyone I know and I can’t wait to read it again. Thanks NetGalley and Random House!

Really interesting memoir, and well written. At times, this memoir was truly painful to read. Growing up in an isolated, fundamentalist Mormon home, Tara Westover struggles to find her sense of self in an atmosphere that is controlled, bizarre, and at times - frightening. Westover's father was distrustful of the government, and many of his children grew up without birth certificates, vaccines, any type of medical treatment, schooling, and other trappings of what we call a "normal" life. The life described in this book was not the Mormonism I was familiar with, and it was jolting to hear about the lifestyle of Tara and her family. Even more disturbing is the way her father put her and her siblings in harms way scavenging in the family junk yard. Everything was rationalized by God - even the abuse that Tara and her siblings suffered at the hands of her brother Shawn. Reading the scenes of physical abuse, being held inside a toilet bow until Tara would call herself a whore - how did this woman ever come to grips with this? The fact that she did persevere, would not let her memories be rewritten, and how she doggedly pursued her education is an inspiration to all. A very unique read.

Author Tara Westover first went to school at the age of 17 much to the dismay of her survivalist parents. Prior to that she never attended school: college would be her first experience with formal education. Not only was going to college a way to get an education, but it also served as an escape from an turbulent family life.

Westover would grapple with being away at school and not being an obedient daughter; she felt the constant pull towards home and sought its acceptance. Even during very unhealthy times she still could not release her home life’s hold on her: to which she couldn’t fully emerge herself in to her new surroundings. It would be a long journey until Westover would embrace her own understandings of the world around her and not the ones her family decided for her.

Educated by Tara Westover was a profound read. Reading Tara’s story we learn of all the adversities she experienced in youth and she still went on to gain an education at the age of 17. Over the next decade she would go on to earn a PhD.

I can’t think of words to do her story justice. I am thankful she let us in on her life: her resilience is inspiring.

Her story teaches you to reflect and seek out experiences whether through reading, socializing, traveling, what have you. That life and being curious should not be taken for granted.

I truly hope Tara’s story is heard around the world and that she achieves critical acclaim. I will be shouting my recommendation from the rooftops for all to hear!

A stunning and wonderful book. I’m a frequent reader of memoirs by those who grow up within strict fundamentalist and/or dysfunctional families, and, like many, this was very horrifying/heartbreaking/inspiring. But Westover writes exceptionally well, and the intellectual depth both of her writing and of her analysis/understanding of her experiences makes it one of my favorite memoirs of its kind, and in general one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read.

I cannot recommend this memoir highly enough. Not since The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls has a true story gripped me, challenged my thinking, and changed my perspective like Tara Westover's first book. Raised in a strict Mormon family in the mountains of Idaho, Tara and most of her siblings were kept out of school, not to be educated at home, but to work in their father's scrap yard and their mother's homeopathic and unlicensed midwifery business. Luckily for all of us readers, Tara kept untold number of journals that detail her life: the abuse by her brother, the unending brainwashing of what world history entailed, the attempts by other brothers to break free, the utter lack of safety in her life, the horrific accidents that devastated her family, the total reliance on naturopathic curatives by her mother, and the impact on her family of her father's mental illness. And just when you think life cannot get crazier, Tara's college and graduate work takes us down another insane rabbit hole. It is a profound look at what happens when one doesn't educate a child on things we think are basic. What if a child has never heard of the Holocaust, the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King? How does this skew their view of the world? How does the world look on this child, when as an adult their questions and comments show not only ignorance, but whiffs of racism and hatred? Whose fault is it? Parent, society, the individual herself? Can a lack of education, or conversely a formal education, fundamentally change society? This is a powerful book that will completely engross you, fascinate you, and in the end, Educate you. Do not miss this book!

I love memoirs for the simple reason that I can step into someone else's life and live in their world for a short time.. That being said this memoir is one of the best that I have read in a long time. You sympathize with the young Tara trying to find her way and then you sympathize with the adult Tara being torn in two different directions as her education opens her eyes and introduces her to different ideas other than what her father has told her, her entire life. My heart broke at certain parts because you so wanted to help her. To cheer her on and tell her yes you are going in the right direction but these are life lessons that she had to learn for herself. Pick up this book on release day or pre order it. I can promise and guarantee that this book will stay with you long after you have read the last word. Happy reading!

It is gripping, terrifying, uncomfortable, and strange (an understatement). And I suppose inspiring, in that you cheer seeing someone overcome oppression. I completely celebrate her success, and the strength it took for her to break free of those poisonous family bonds.

Now I feel funny about this next thought, and I hope I am not setting myself up for ridicule…but that has never stopped me before, so here goes.

It is just that I can’t help thinking about similar families where the child is not quite so bright, and isn’t able to make that ACT score that gets them out of the abuse. Oh, to think of all the children that eventually buy into the paranoia and submit their souls to such a tortured unhappy life. And it comes across that while there may be petty victories, ultimately this is a very unhappy family. And how could they not be unhappy.

She does an incredible job pulling you into her world, and maybe she does her job so well I started feeling it to well. It was too personally. It is so, so real. So really you want to scream through the pages to her (I see other reviews say things along that line)….

[Toward the end around kindle location 4738]… I had retreated, fled across an ocean and allowed my father to tell my story for me, to define me to everyone I had ever known. I had conceded too much ground - not just the mountains, but the entire province of our shared history
It was time to go home.

NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Like yelling at the stupid kids in a horror movie you scream “Don’t GO THERE”!! But she does.
Well, she gets out unscathed on her last visit home…Barely.

She shows us the terror of the family, and our understanding grows with hers as she comes to recognize the absurdity of that world.

Why are you like this? Why did you terrify us like that? Why did you fight so hard against made-up monsters, but do nothing about the monsters in your own house? 3207

Damn straight!

Yeah, VERY effective writing. And they only reason I am going with 4 stars rather than 5 is because even though it is a powerful book, I feel there is some more to her story. Maybe she hasn’t lived it and that is why it isn’t there. I guess I am hoping for some insight or wisdom that takes her tale from a personal triumph to a revelation on the nature of mankind. Maybe I am asking too much.

I too wondered where the survivalist, end times / religious apocalypse, of the father came from and appreciated here observations…

[ …on the speculation that the Ruby Rindge encounter might be linked with bipolar disorder of the Weavers, and not because the government was attacking for home schooling their children as her father had said] …For one bitter moment, I thought Dad had lied. Then I remembered the fear on his face, the heavy rattling of his breath, and I felt certain that he’d really believed were in danger. I reached for some explanation and strange words came to mind, words I’d learned only minutes before: paranoia, mania, delusions of grandeur and persecution. And finally the story made sense. 3184

Some of us were more disciplined than others. I was one of the least disciplined, so by the time I was ten, the only subject I had studied systematically was Morse code, because Dad insisted that I learn it. “If the lines are cut, we’ll be the only people in the valley who can communicate,” he said, though I was never quite sure, if we were the only people learning it, who we’d be communicating with. 777

By the end of it I was just burnt out. It takes so much energy to read about the paranoia and anger... I was just so tired and depressed. All that energy and the only joy they have is in “knowing” everybody else will die, and those that don’t will be kept away by the family arsenal. Uggh, how depressing.

There is a lot more, but I need a break. I am plum wore out.


NOTE: I got this early edition from NetGalley and I am well pleased.

Educated by Tara Westover is an unforgettable memoir, joining the ranks of Glass Castle, Liar’s Club, and Wild. I couldn’t put it down and, days later, am still thinking about it. Westover has a novelist’s eye for detail and description, especially about her childhood. There’s no excessive storytelling here. Every anecdote has a purpose and leads to a powerful ending. The push and pull she feels with her family is visceral, and my heart aches for what she went through to get her diplomas.

As a child, Westover doesn’t go to school because her survivalist father believes it’s government propaganda. Instead, she’s educated in her father’s junkyard scrapping metal and in her mother’s kitchen concocting herbal remedies that substitute for healthcare. Everything she knows of the world is filtered through their paranoid, misogynistic religious beliefs. It’s a tough childhood made worse by her brother Shawn’s physical and emotional abuse. Her parents refuse to believe the abuse and make Tara question her own memories and beliefs.

Despite the hardships, Tara maintains a spark of independence. When another brother, Tyler, returns home from college, he tells her, “There’s a world out there, Tara. And it will look a lot different once Dad is no longer whispering his view of it in your ear.” Inspired, she teaches herself enough math and grammar to do well on the ACT and gets into BYU.

Tara’s extreme childhood leaves her ill prepared for the world beyond the mountain. Her fish-out-of-water experiences in college are both humorous and heartbreaking. She gains confidence over time, works really hard, and graduates from BYU, then goes on to earn a Ph.D. from Cambridge.

She tries to maintain family ties throughout her education, but the further she gets, the harder it becomes. Her parents accept Tara going to school, but they can’t handle her gaining a different perspective on their lives and questioning what they hold as true. Ultimately, they make her choose: repent and return to the mountain or be cast out of the family.

Despite her unusual story, Westover hits on universal experiences: feeling like an imposter, being torn between family and one’s own desires, the frustration of dealing with gaslighting, and learning to see the world with new eyes. Her path teaches us a lot about resilience and tenacity, and finding your truth in a confusing, sometimes hostile, world.

No matter what Westover does in the future, I’m glad she’s told her coming-of-age story. The memoir genre is richer for it.

I received an ARC of Educated, by Tara Westover, via NetGalley.

This is a book that is difficult to rate because I hated everything about the path Westover took to get where she currently resides in her journey. No one in her family is likable, and there were points where I didn't much like Tara either.

Even now I struggle to consider a rating. But, after much thought, I rated the book on the courage it must have taken to reveal the level of sludge she had to dig herself out of to write it at all.

Having said that, while her ability to survive the crazy is commendable, it was still difficult for me to reconcile her ability to finally (and I do mean 'finally' in the most exasperated sense of the word) overcome the suffocating nature of her family's gross misuse of the terms 'love' and 'loyalty', with the trifling pace she chose to do so.

In so many ways, Westover continually sabotaged her personal growth by blindly following ideals that were never based in reality or love of any kind.

Sure, her parents may have loved her, in some twisted way, but their execution of that love came with so many nasty strings, and frightening terms and conditions, until it was disgraceful to even see those words used in connection to her.

Her father clearly suffered from a severe mental illness, but instead of anyone making sure he was treated, they anointed him a "prophet" because, eh, why not, right? Every action that came to pass in a positive (or negative) way was 'Gods Will'--as opposed to being the result of the dumb decisions he continued to make.

As for her mother, she won't win any awards for parenting; she failed on so many levels--if this memoir is any indication--and she did so without one ounce of regret. Her complicity was disgusting.

And don't even get me started on her abusive, narcissistic, brother, 'Shawn'. A man so deluded about his place in the world, he felt he could play god.

Not only was he able to run roughshod over his siblings, without fear of repercussion, he did so with the blessing of his parents.

Ugh. Just reading about her experience took patience, because the ignorance was so overwhelmingly despicable, I didn't even wish to be a partial witness to it having took place.

I didn't want to be reminded how inhumane people are willing to be in the name of religion, and their own perverted sense of what is, and is not, 'righteous'.

I wanted to abandon ship on Westover's story so many times--mostly because I kept wondering what rational human being is as stupid as she kept deciding to be, in the name of her family's acceptance and love?

I mean, when your parents basically tell you to adhere to a set of false memories, as a condition of not being exiled from your entire bloodline, then it's time to leave on your own accord. But, no, Westover continually struggled with making that decision, and that made me beyond irate. I didn't even want to see how she finally emancipated herself from the trifling idiocy that was her family because I was beginning to think she was a glutton for punishment.

However, this one passage--related to her discovery of the history behind the "N word" gave me just enough faith to continue reading:
I had started on a path of awareness, had perceived something elemental about my brother, my father, myself. I had discerned the ways in which we had been sculpted by a tradition of which we were either willfully or accidentally ignorant. I had begun to understand that we had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalize others--because nurturing that discourse was easier, because retaining power always feels like the way forward.

Of course, by this point, I was skeptical she would ever wake up from the ignorance instilled by her father. But, it was a start.

It's nice to know Westover eventually got her act together, but the path she took was muddled as much by her need to stay connected to an abusive situation, as it was the result of her needing an anchor of familiarity to assist her through a world she was only just beginning to understand--the world in which most people live.

One thing is certain, she endured plenty and had a lot of growing to do--likely still does.

That said, her story further confirms two things: 1) the misuse and abuse of religious doctrine, in any way, is dangerous when placed in the hands of the ignorant, and 2) some people are so broken, it takes years to put them back together...and even then, you can't be sure they'll ever be completely healed.

This book was a whirlwind of emotions. I had so many feelings while reading this book, and I could not put it down. I needed to know what happened to Tara next. I keep wanting to say that I loved this book, but this book was someone's real life and I can't say I loved this book because of that. Because someone went through every awful thing that happened during this book, and I can't love that. I cannot love another person's pain. I can; however, love that Tara was brave enough to put out her story. I can love that Tara persevered through all the pain and trials she's been through so far in her life. I can love Tara's courage and endurance. I can love the strength Tara has. So I love this book for it's ending, for Tara's personality and future. For Tara's courage. Thank you for sharing your story with all of us, and opening my eyes even more to the world around me.

With 'Educated', Westover gives us a glimpse into her life growing up in a Mormon fundamentalist family in rural Idaho. Her parents don't believe in public schooling, or doctors, and are extremely mistrustful of the government. As a child, Tara lives a very sheltered life, rarely leaving her small town or interacting with outsiders. She and her siblings narrowly escape serious injury or death a number of times, but they are treated at home by their mother. She suffers abuse from her brother and neglect from her parents, although she blames herself whenever something happens.

Somehow, without any formal schooling and with a staggering amount of willpower and grit, she works hard and is accepted to BYU. This starts her on a path to a new life, and slowly she realizes just how sheltered she has been. She struggles to reconcile what she is learning in school with the realities of her life back home, and slowly begins to break from her family.

Westover has written a powerful memoir. There is a lot to think about in this book, about the power that parents have over children, the way that religion shapes families, and how difficult it can be to break away from expectations. Highly recommended.

For anyone who is even an occasional memoir reader, Educated should immediately be on your radar. For anyone who has considered reading memoirs, Educated would be an excellent place to start. For anyone who just likes really fascinating stories about difficult circumstances and eventual triumphs, Educated has you covered, too.
Before starting Educated, I'd read several comparisons between it and another much revered memoir, The Glass Castle, and to some extent the comparison is fair (and to be clear, both of these memoirs are and remain five star reads for me). Both Tara Westover and Jeannette Walls came from hardscrabble beginnings, with parents who had their own demons and were devoted first and foremost to each other. They both experienced and witnessed terrible things as a child due to their family's circumstances and their parents' choices. However, their individual stories diverge greatly besides those similarities, and their experiences both deserve attention. Perhaps it is because of the fact that Tara Westover is much closer to my own age that makes her story resonate more with me personally as it doesn't have the remove of time. Tara's experiences were happening at virtually the same time as I experienced a very normal (by U.S. standards) childhood. Additionally, while there are certainly flaws to the educational system in this country, and while Tara's experience with homeschooling (or lack thereof) is obviously not typical, reading about her experience when she enters formal education for the first time in college was enlightening, to say the least. I realized while reading this that there are so many things that I took for granted and don't remember actually being taught, but realistically, at some point I learned these things either through formal or informal instruction in school.
Tara's story is at times infuriating, at times horrifying, at times inspiring, and at times heartbreaking. It's engaging from beginning to end, and inspires a lot of thought about family, religion, and education.

Educated is a fascinating, spellbinding memoir about the author’s life with her extreme Mormon,survivalist family in Idaho. Tara tells her story factually which makes the abnormal of her family life even more chilling. In spite of all the abuse from her father and even violence from her unbalanced brother Shawn it is not a depressing account. The resilience and struggle of Tara to slowly get out of this alternative , religion induced, reality is testament to great resilience of the human nature and spirit. I definitely would recommend this book for everyone.

My first five-star read of 2018. This book is beautifully written and is both heart-breaking and inspiring. Tara boldly shares her story of abuse at the hands of her family and the strength of spirit that allowed her to break free. It is an eye-opener to read the story of people who kind of fly under the radar to society at large. It is a world that I can not understand but this book taught me so much. I am thankful for Tara's honesty, as she explores the hurt she faced by the people who were meant to protect her, how she shows that breaking free from your abusers is not an easy thing to do and in some cases takes multiple attempts. I also loved reading her time of discovery in educational institutions, I can remember vividly through her words what it was like reading at university, I can only imagine how much more amazing it was for her. I think this book is a must-read for all in 2018.

Tara Westover overcame obstacles that are hard to imagine. An abusive, brilliant, bi-polar father. A beautiful, submissive, brilliant mother. A large Morman family swarming with brothers and sisters that were not formally educated, fight to stay, fight to leave, and fight with each other on the side of a breathtaking mountain. Her father is a zealot, a freedom fighter, and a prepper, full of love, anger, patience, violence and enough jars of peaches to last ten years. As Tara grows up she is content working dangerously in their junkyard with the boys, reading her bible and helping mother with her holistic remedies. As she matures, her intelligence and curiosity cannot be suppressed any longer. She finds herself at a young age (no one knows for sure, because she has no birth certificate) at BYU formally learning for the first time in her life. How she manages with no experience or social skills, no money and no idea what to expect makes her the bravest, smartest and most independent woman imaginable. But even after success at Cambridge, Harvard and a PhD, it takes years and years to conform to mainstream living and Tara never shakes the longing for her father’s acceptance. Bizarre or not, she craves his approval and does not want to be estranged from her boisterous, often abusive clan. Tara Westover beautifully describes her very personal journey exploring family relationships and both parental and personal responsibilities to ones future. To analyze the nature and nature of yourself with honesty is not an easy task. Highly recommend this magnificent memoir, I could not put this one down.

Absolutely phenomenal read. I could not put this down! Ms. Westover's incredible story is captivating and inspiring.

Wow, what a powerful book. The world Tara grew up in is so removed from any normalcy and yet it is her normal. It is amazing that inside her was such strength to push back and strive for her own truth. This story of abuse in the home, from those you love, makes you want to reach into the book and shake people, Tara included. At the same time the root of the abuse, the lack of education, religious extremism, and mental illness fills you with compassion. I so applaud all the people with whom she encountered who helped to set her compass in the right direction, who could have rightly walked away thinking what a nut case, and still persisted. I am so impressed with her ability to self evaluate, and really think deeply on how she was feeling and how that was impacting her life, and the will to change. Such a strong family that she grew up in. I wonder if they all could have somehow been transported into a family who embraced medicine, schooling, rational thought, what they all would have aspired to.
This book is written in a more factual accounting of what happened, with some lyrical moments thrown in. I look forward to more books coming from Tara Westover, a very talented and strong writer.

This is a memoir about Westover's childhood, growing up in Utah, the youngest of seven siblings. The author's parents didn't believe in anything connected to the government, including modern medicine. The children were homeschooled, but actually didn't receive much of an education. Any sickness or injury was treated with herbal medicines, even severe injuries caused by car accidents and explosions. When she was seventeen, Westover went to school for the first time and spent the next decade pursuing an education.
This was a difficult book to read, both because of the graphic incidents of violence and abuse described and because it is hard to believe that parents could behave the way the author's parents did. Throughout the book Westover wrestles with the idea of her own worth and whether or not she can disagree with her family's beliefs and still be a good person. This is a fascinating look at how education can be the solution to isolation and misinformation.

"I am only seven, but I understand that it is this fact, more than any other, that makes my family different: we don't go to school."

Tara Westover begins her memoir with this fact. It's typical of the book: not written in soaring prose, but stated factually. We learn much more about her upbringing. Her fundamentalist Mormon family is extreme in the extreme -- the family lives on a mountain, and Dad rules the roost in every way. He fears the government (the kids don't have birth certificates and the family doesn't visit doctors, even when they are horrifically burned or when they are badly hurt in car accidents). He prepares the family for the "end of days" and preaches to them about the evils of the Illuminati: "I spent my summers bottling peaches and my winters rotating supplies. When the World of Men failed, my family would continue on, unaffected."

And of course, Dad doesn't believe in the kids attending school. Instead, Mom "home schools" them, although this amounts to little. Tara remembers paging through a math book. She decides to count each page her fingers touch as studied, so when her mom asks her how many pages she has completed, she answers "Fifty." Her mom is proud and exclaims over how she could never make that kind of progress in public schools.

"Normal" to Tara consists of this type of schooling, and of working at her dad's junkyard. It's only later that her "understanding would shift, part of (her) heavy swing into adulthood."

Her older brother, Tyler, decides to buck the family's rules and attend college. His parents are not happy: "College is extra school for people too dumb to learn the first time around," her dad says. However, Tyler tells Tara about how much he enjoys learning: "There's a world out there, Tara, and it will look a lot different once Dad is no longer whispering his view of it in your ear."

Tara decides to take the ACT and try to get into college herself. First she has to find a math book and do months of study, but she does get a high enough score to get in. She is totally a fish out of water there, not knowing about the Holocaust or many other historical events that pretty much everyone else grew up knowing. She is appalled at the wardrobe of many of the girls (and this is at Brigham Young, a conservative school), having been taught by her dad that a "righteous woman never shows anything above her ankles."

Throughout the book, one thing that puzzled and frustrated me was now supportive Tara's mom was of her dad, at the expense of her children. In some ways, she tries to help Tara escape and go to school. But ultimately, she stays loyal to her husband even when it means writing Tara out of her life. I understand that she has been brainwashed by him (as Tara was as a child, and as many of her siblings still are), but still, it was maddening. To this day, when Tara has contacted her mom to see if she can visit her, Mom refuses, unless Dad can come along as well. "Dad had always been a hard man -- a man who knew the truth on every subject and wasn't interested in what anybody else had to say. We listened to him, never the other way around: when he was not speaking, he required silence."

And Dad is a mess. Tara learns at some point about bipolar disorder, and it opens up a whole new level of understanding to her: this describes her dad's behavior exactly. Of course, given his beliefs, seeing a doctor or taking any type of medication is unthinkable. Heaven help the family when he gets riled up (which is often). "The Lord has called me to testify," he says to Tara at one point. "He is displeased. You have cast aside His blessings to whore after man's knowledge. His wrath is stirred against you. It will not be long in coming."

After a shaky start, Tara goes on to succeed wildly in the academic world, studying at Cambridge and Harvard, and having now earned her PhD (interestingly, she and three of her siblings have all earned PhD's, while the other three still live with the parents and have never attended school). Yet her parents, particularly her dad, still seem oblivious. "It proves one thing at least," her dad says at a graduation. "Our home school is as good as any public education."

Tara is hugely conflicted throughout the book. She loves learning and the "real" world, while being understandably still pulled toward the family that was her entire world as she grew up. Once a friend asks if she is angry that her parents didn't put her in school. "It was an advantage!" she shouts, realizing as she says it that she's speaking from instinct. Her friend answers, "Well, I'm angry, even if you aren't."

And I felt angry as I read this book as well. It's hard to read -- like "Glass Castle" but harsher -- and it always annoys me when a family is abusive under the cover of religion, thereby turning the kids off to God in the process (Tara doesn't mention her faith these days, but I'm pretty sure she doesn't attend church).

Ironically, the family's off-the-grid lifestyle has ended up serving them well. They started an herbal business ("a spiritual alternative to Obamacare") that now earns them hundreds of thousands each year.

This is a book that will stay with you for a long time. It will make you think. Highly recommended.