Tara Westover didn't step foot in a classroom until she was 17.
Her memoir, "Educated," details her life as a member of a fundamentalist family so isolated from mainstream society it didn't educate its children. After one of her brothers made it to college, Westover decided it was time to leave the world she grew up in and seek an education for herself. Her quest took her from the halls of Harvard to the classrooms in Cambridge, where she finally earned a PhD.
Roman called the book "fantastic" and said he recommends it to everyone.
"It's just hard to believe that it happens in the 21st century in America," he said. "It's also a fascinating story about the power of will."
The book has appeared on a number of other high-profile recommendation lists. Bill Gates included it on his roundup of five nonfiction picks, and Barack Obama put it on his annual list of the year's top books.