The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates

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Overview

Two kids with the same name lived in the same decaying city. One went on to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison. Here is the story of two boys and the journey of a generation.

In December 2000, the Baltimore Sun ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local student who had just received a Rhodes Scholarship. The same paper also ran a series of articles about four young men who had allegedly killed a police officer in a spectacularly botched armed robbery. The police were still hunting for two of the suspects who had gone on the lam, a pair of brothers. One was named Wes Moore.

Wes just couldn’t shake off the unsettling coincidence, or the inkling that the two shared much more than space in the same newspaper. After following the story of the robbery, the manhunt, and the trial to its conclusion, he wrote a letter to the other Wes, now a convicted murderer serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. His letter tentatively asked the questions that had been haunting him: Who are you? How did this happen?

That letter led to a correspondence and relationship that have lasted for several years. Over dozens of letters and prison visits, Wes discovered that the other Wes had had a life not unlike his own: Both had grown up in similar neighborhoods and had had difficult childhoods, both were fatherless; they’d hung out on similar corners with similar crews, and both had run into trouble with the police. At each stage of their young lives they had come across similar moments of decision, yet their choices would lead them to astonishingly different destinies.

Told in alternating dramatic narratives that take readers from heart-wrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption, The Other Wes Moore tells the story of a generation of boys trying to find their way in a hostile world.

Wes Moore
Wes Moore

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Two hauntingly similar boys take starkly different paths in this searing tale of the ghetto. Moore, an investment banker, Rhodes scholar, and former aide to Condoleezza Rice, was intrigued when he learned that another Wes Moore, his age and from the same area of Greater Baltimore, was wanted for killing a cop. Meeting his double and delving into his life reveals deeper likenesses: raised in fatherless families and poor black neighborhoods, both felt the lure of the money and status to be gained from dealing drugs. That the author resisted the criminal underworld while the other Wes drifted into it is chalked up less to character than to the influence of relatives, mentors, and expectations that pushed against his own delinquent impulses, to the point of exiling him to military school. Moore writes with subtlety and insight about the plight of ghetto youth, viewing it from inside and out; he probes beneath the pathologies to reveal the pressures—poverty, a lack of prospects, the need to respond to violence with greater violence—that propelled the other Wes to his doom. The result is a moving exploration of roads not taken. (May 4)

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780385528207
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Publication date: 1/11/2011
Pages: 272
Sales rank: 16,567
Lexile: 990L (what's this?)
Product dimensions: 5.19 (w) x 8.00 (h) x 0.60 (d)

Meet the Author

Wes Moore

Wes Moore is a Rhodes Scholar and a combat veteran of Afghanistan. As a White House Fellow, he worked as a special assistant to Secretary Condoleezza Rice at the State Department. He was a featured speaker at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, was named one of Ebony magazine’s Top 30 Leaders Under 30 (2007), and, most recently, was dubbed one of the top young business leaders in New York by Crain’s New York Business. He works in New York City.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Is Daddy Coming with Us?

1982

Nikki and I would play this game: I would sit on the living room chair while Nikki deeply inhaled and then blew directly in my face, eliciting hysterical laughs on both sides. This was our ritual. It always ended with me jabbing playfully at her face. She’d run away and bait me to give chase. Most times before today I never came close to catching her. But today, I caught her and realized, like a dog chasing a car, I had no idea what to do. So, in the spirit of three-year-old boys everywhere who’ve run out of better ideas, I decided to punch her. Of course my mother walked into the room right as I swung and connected.

The yell startled me, but her eyes are what I remember.

“Get up to your damn room” came my mother’s command from the doorway. “I told you, don’t you ever put your hands on a woman!”

I looked up, confused, as she quickly closed the distance between us.

My mother had what we called “Thomas hands,” a tag derived from her maiden name: hands that hit so hard you had to be hit only once to know you never wanted to be hit again. The nickname began generations ago, but each generation took on the mantle of justifying it. Those hands were now reaching for me. Her eyes told me it was time to get moving.

I darted up the stairs, still unsure about what I’d done so terribly wrong. I headed to the bedroom I shared with my baby sister, Shani. Our room was tiny, barely big enough for my small bed and her crib. There was no place to hide. I was running in circles, frantic to find a way to conceal myself. And still trying to comprehend why I was in so much trouble. I couldn’t even figure out the meaning of half the words my mother was using.

In a panic, I kicked the door shut behind me just as her voice reached the second floor. “And don’t let me hear you slam that—” Boom! I stared for a moment at the closed door, knowing it would soon be flying open again. I sat in the middle of the room, next to my sister’s empty crib, awaiting my fate.

Then, deliverance.

“Joy, you can’t get on him like that.” My father’s baritone voice drifted up through the thin floor. “He’s only three. He doesn’t even understand what he did wrong. Do you really think he knows what a woman beater is?”

My father was in the living room, ten feet from where the incident began. He was a very slender six foot two with a bushy mustache and a neatly shaped afro. It wasn’t his style to yell. When he heard my mother’s outburst, he rose from his chair, his eyes widening in confusion. My mother slowly reeled herself in. But she wasn’t completely mollified.
“Wes, he needs to learn what is acceptable and what is not!” My father agreed, but with a gentle laugh, reminded her that cursing at a young boy wasn’t the most effective way of making a point. I was saved, for the moment.

My first name, Westley, is my father’s. I have two middle names, a compromise between my parents. My father loved the sound and meaning of Watende, a Shona word that means “revenge will not be sought,” a concept that aligned with his gentle spirit. My mother objected. Watende sounded too big, too complicated for such a tiny baby. It wasn’t until later in life that she understood why it was so important to my father that Watende be a part of me. Instead, she lobbied for Omari, which means “the highest.” I’m not sure what was easier or less lofty about that name, but I was well into elementary school before I became comfortable spelling either.

My parents’ debate continued downstairs, but their words faded. I went to the room’s only window and looked out on the world. My older sister, Nikki, and I loved to look through the window as families arrived at the swap market across the street. Our home was on a busy street that sat right on the border of Maryland and Washington, D.C., stuck confusingly between two different municipal jurisdictions, a fact that would become very significant in the near future. I pulled back the thin diaphanous curtain that covered the windows and spotted my friend Ayana outside with her mother. She was half Iranian and half Italian, with long, dark hair and warm eyes that always fascinated me. They were light green, unlike the eyes of anyone else I knew, and they twinkled as if they held stars. I wanted to tap on the window to say hello as she walked past our house to the tenement building next door. But I was afraid of making more trouble for myself, so I just smiled.

On the dresser by the window sat a framed picture of me with Nikki. I sat on her lap with my arm wrapped around her neck, a goofy smile on my face. Nikki is seven years older, so in the picture she was nine and I was barely two. Colorful beads capped the braided tips of her hair, a style she shared with my mother, and large, black-framed eyeglasses covered half of her face.

Nikki’s real name was Joy, like my mom’s, but everyone called her Nikki. My mother was obsessed with the poet Nikki Giovanni, in love with her unabashed feminine strength and her reconciliation of love and revolution. I spent nearly every waking moment around Nikki, and I loved her dearly. But sibling relationships are often fraught with petty tortures. I hadn’t wanted to hurt her. But I had.

At the time, I couldn’t understand my mother’s anger. I mean this wasn’t really a woman I was punching. This was Nikki. She could take it. Years would pass before I understood how that blow connected to my mom’s past.

My mother came to the United States at the age of three. She was born in Lowe River in the tiny parish of Trelawny, Jamaica, hours away from the tourist traps that line the coast. Its swaths of deep brush and arable land made it great for farming but less appealing for honeymoons and hedonism. Lowe River was quiet, and remote, and it was home for my mother, her brothers, and my grandparents. My maternal great-grandfather Mas Fred, as he was known, would plant a coconut tree at his home in Mount Horeb, a neighboring area, for each of his kids and grandkids when they were born. My mom always bragged that hers was the tallest and strongest of the bunch. The land that Mas Fred and his wife, Miss Ros, tended had been cared for by our ancestors for generations. And it was home for my mom until her parents earned enough money to bring the family to the States to fulfill my grandfather’s dream of a theology degree from an American university.

When my mom first landed in the Bronx, she was just a small child, but she was a survivor and learned quickly. She studied the other kids at school like an anthropologist, trying desperately to fit in. She started with the way she spoke. She diligently listened to the radio from the time she was old enough to turn it on and mimicked what she heard. She’d always pull back enough in her interactions with her classmates to give herself room to quietly observe them, so that when she got home she could practice imitating their accents, their idiosyncrasies, their style. Words like irie became cool. Constable became policeman. Easy-nuh became chill out. The melodic, swooping movement of her Jamaican patois was quickly replaced by the more stable cadences of American English. She jumped into the melting pot with both feet.

Joy Thomas entered American University in Washington, D.C., in 1968, a year when she and her adopted homeland were both experiencing volatile change—Vietnam, a series of assassinations, campus unrest, rioting that tore through the nation’s cities, and an American president who no longer wanted the job. Joy herself was caught between loving the country that offered her and her family new opportunities and being frustrated with that country because it still made her feel like a second-class citizen.

At college, Joy quickly fell in with the OAASAU, the very long acronym for a very young group, the Organization of African and African-American Students at the American University. The OAASAU was rallying AU’s black students into engagement with the national, international, and campus issues roiling around them.The battling organization elevated her consciousness beyond her assimilationist dreams and sparked a passion for justice and the good fight.
A charismatic AU senior named Bill was the treasurer of OAASAU, and two months after they met early in the exciting whirlwind of her freshman year, Joy was engaged to marry him. Despite the quick engagement, they waited two years to get married, by which time Joy was a junior and Bill a recent graduate looking for work. Marriage brought the sobering realities of life into focus. The truth was, they were both still trying to find their feet as adults and feeling a little in over their heads as a married couple.

As the love haze wore off, Joy began to see that the same qualities that had made Bill so attractive as a college romance—his free and rebellious spirit, his nearly paralyzing contempt for “the Man”—made him a completely unreliable husband. And she discovered that what she had foolishly thought of as his typical low-level recreational drug use was really something much worse. In a time of drug experimentation and excess, Bill was starting to look like a casualty.

As the years passed, Joy kept hoping that Bill’s alcohol and drug use would fade. She was caught in a familiar trap for young women and girls—the fantasy that she alone could change her man. So she doubled down on the relationship. They had a child together. She hoped that would motivate Bill to make some changes. But his addiction just got worse, and the physical, mental, and emotional abuse he unleashed became more intense.

One night things came to a head. Bill came home and started to badger Joy about washing the dishes. His yelling threatened to wake up one-year-old Nikki, and Joy tried to shush him. He kept yelling. He moved in on her. The two of them stood face-to-face, him yelling, her pleading with him in hushed tones to lower his voice.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her down. She sprawled on the floor in her white T-shirt and blue AU sweatpants, stunned but not completely surprised by his explosive reaction. He wasn’t done. He grabbed her by her T-shirt and hair, and started to drag her toward the kitchen. He hit her in the chest and stomach, trying to get her to move her arms, which were now defensively covering her head. Finally, she snapped. She screamed at him without fear of waking Nikki as he dragged her across the parquet floor. She kicked and scratched at his hands.

Bill was too strong, too determined, too high. Her head slammed against the doorframe as he finally dragged her body onto the kitchen’s linoleum floor. He released her hair and her now-ripped T-shirt and once again ordered her to wash the dishes. He stood over her with a contemptuous scowl on his face. It could’ve been that look. Or it could’ve been the escalating abuse and the accumulated frustration at the chaotic life he was creating for her and her daughter. But something gave Joy the strength to pull herself up from the floor. On top of the counter was a wooden block that held all of the large, sharp knives in the kitchen. She pulled the biggest knife from its sheath and pointed the blade at his throat. Her voice was collected as she made her promise: “If you try that shit again, I will kill you.”

Bill seemed to suddenly regain his sobriety. He backed out of the kitchen slowly, not taking his eyes from his wife’s tear-drenched face. Her unrelenting stare. They didn’t speak for the rest of the night. One month later, Joy and Nikki were packed up. Together, they left Bill for good.

My mom vowed to never let another man put his hands on her. She wouldn’t tolerate it in others either.

My parents finished their conversation, and it was obvious that one of them was heading up to speak to me. I turned from the window and stood in the middle of the room, mentally running through my nonexistent options for escape.
Soon I could tell by the sound of the steps it was my father. His walk was slower, heavier, more deliberate. My mother tended to move up the stairs in a sprint. He lightly knocked on the door and slowly turned the knob. The door opened slightly, and he peeked in. His easy half smile, almost a look of innocent curiosity, assured me that, at least for now, the beating would wait.

“Hey, Main Man, do you mind if I come in?” I’m told that he had many terms of endearment for me, but Main Man is the one I remember. I didn’t even look up but nodded slowly. He had to duck to clear the low doorway. He picked me up and, as he sat on the bed, placed me on his lap. As I sat there, all of my anxiety released. I could not have felt safer, more secure. He began to explain what I did wrong and why my mother was so angry. “Main Man, you just can’t hit people, and particularly women. You must defend them, not fight them. Do you understand?”

I nodded, then asked, “Is Mommy mad at me?”

“No, Mommy loves you, like I love you, she just wants you to do the right thing.”

My father and I sat talking for another five minutes before he led me downstairs to apologize to my sister, and my mother. With each tiny step I took with him, my whole hand wrapped tighter around his middle finger. I tried to copy his walk, his expressions. I was his main man. He was my protector.

That is one of only two memories I have of my father.

The other was when I watched him die.

My dad was his parents’ only son. Tall but not physically imposing, he dreamed of being on television—having a voice that made an impact. Armed with an insatiable desire to succeed—and aided by his natural gifts, which included a deeply resonant voice—he made his dream come true soon after finishing up at Bard College in 1971.

As a young reporter, he went to many corners of the country, following a story or, in many cases, following a job. After stints in North Carolina, New York, Florida, Virginia, California, and a handful of other states, he returned home to southern Maryland and started work at a job that would change his life. He finally had the chance to host his own public affairs show. And he’d hired a new writing assistant. Her name was Joy.

Introduction xi

Part I Fathers and Angels

1 Is Daddy Coming with Us? 5

2 In Search of Home 26

3 Foreign Ground 46

Part II Choices and Second Chances

4 Marking Territory 69

5 Lost 85

6 Hunted 108

Part III Paths taken and Expectations Fulfilled

7 The Land That God Forgot 129

8 Surrounded 146

Epilogue 173

Afterword 181

A Call to Action by Tavis Smiley 185

Resource Guide 187

Acknowledgments 235

A Reader's Guide 241

Reading Group Guide

1. The author says to the other Wes, “I guess it’s hard sometimes todistinguish between second chances and last chances.” What do you think he means? What is each Wes’s “last chance”? Discuss the differences in how each one uses that chance and why they make the decisions they do.

2. During their youth, Wes and Wes spend most of their time in crime- ridden Baltimore and the Bronx. How important was that environment in shaping their stories and personalities?

3. Why do you think the incarcerated Wes continues to proclaim his innocence regarding his role in the crime for which he was convicted?

4. The book begins with Wes and Wes’s discussion of their fathers. What role do you think fatherhood plays in the lives of these men? How do the absence of their fathers and the differences in the reasons for their absences affect them?

5. Wes dedicates the book to “the women who helped shape [his] journey to manhood.” Discuss the way women are seen in Wes’s community. What impact do they have on their sons?

6. The author says “the chilling truth is that [Wes’s] story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his.” To what extent do you think that’s true? What, ultimately, prevented their stories from being interchangeable?

7. Throughout the book, the author sometimes expresses confusion at his own motivations. Why do you think he is so driven to understand the other Wes’s life?

8. The author attributes Wes’s eventual incarceration to shortsightedness, an inability to critically think about the future. Do you agree?

9. Wes states that people often live up to the expectations projected on them. Is that true? If someone you care for expects you to succeed—or fail—will you? Where does personal accountability come into play?

10. Discuss the relationship between education and poverty. In your discussion, consider the education levels of both Weses’ mothers, how far each man got in his education, the opportunities they gained or lost as a result of their education, and their reasons for continuing or discontinuing their studies.

11. The book begins with a scene in which the author is reprimanded for hitting his sister. Why is it important for conflicts to be solved hrough means other than violence? In what way do the Weses differ in their approaches to physical confrontations, and why?

12. Why is the idea of “going straight” so unappealing to the incarcerated Wes and his peers? What does it mean for our culture to have such a large population living and working outside the boundaries of the law?

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PM1968

Posted April 20, 2010

I Also Recommend:

A powerful and insightful look into what makes us tick and the role our families and influences play in our outcomes. Already an accomplished human being, Wes Moore is still on an upward track and a rising star. This is a must read book!

I had never heard of Wes Moore before I was lucky enough to be in the audience at the Oprah Winfrey Show when he was a guest (air date 04/27/10). As a parting gift, we received an advance copy of The Other Wes Moore. In the few minutes that this Wes Moore was on stage, I was immediately struck by his charisma, enthusiasm for life and belief in a brighter future for others who begin life as he did. I read the book from cover-to-cover the moment I returned home.

As I read, I was searching for the thought processes that made this Wes Moore, successful and upwardly mobile in life and the other Wes, headed for defeat and failure. I wanted to know what this Wes Moore was made of - whether innately there or implanted and nurtured by others. The book sheds light on this.

Our Wes Moore comments, "Young boys are more likely to believe in themselves if they know that there's someone, somewhere, who shares that belief. To carry the burden of belief alone is too much for most young shoulders." At crucial junctures when our Wes was unable to carry the burden, his mother, friends, grandparents and mentors helped shoulder it with him but he remained part of the mix.

By contrast, from prison, the other Wes Moore comments, "We take other's expectations of us and make them our own. The expectations that others place on us help us form our expectations of ourselves. We will do what others expect of us. If they expect us to graduate, we will graduate. If they expect us to get a job, we will get a job. If they expect us to go to jail, then that's where we will end up too. At some point you lose control." To that, our Wes Moore, adds, "True, but it's easy to lose control when you were never looking for it in the first place."

Both Wes Moores started out with the odds stacked against them and innately, I think, both wanted to succeed but there finally came a time when they each chose a different path for themselves. At a later point in his life when our Wes is firmly on the right path, he visits South Africa and speaks with a woman who survived apartheid. She states, "The common bond of humanity and decency that we share is stronger than any conflict, any adversity, and challenge. Fighting for your convictions is important but finding peace is paramount. Knowing when to fight and when to seek peace is wisdom." Also in South Africa, Wes meets a boy who is days away from going through the Xhosa adult circumcision ritual and when Wes asks if the boy is scared of the pain and the process, the boy replies, "It's not the process you should focus on; it's the joy you will feel after you go through the process."

That sums up the meaning of this book for me. Life is a process and the end result is the prize. Our Wes Moore is deserving of joy. He has earned it and he continues to pay it forward in his life.

I am now a fan of Wes Moore. I have no doubt that his name will become a household one once the Oprah show airs and his book hits newsstands. Pick up several copies, as I have, to give as gifts to those looking for inspiration. A local Boys and Girls Club or other families-helping-families type organization would benefit greatly from this book.

Ultimately, I think you are left with the realization that we are responsible for ourselves and for each other. These are not mutually exclusive events. Wes benefited from a loving, self-sacrificing family but he kept himself as part of the equation. The other Wes didn't.

18 out of 18 people found this review helpful.
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SophiaGirl

Posted July 7, 2010

Over hyped book

I was very disappointed with this book. I first heard the "author" Wes Moore interviewed on NPR, he was on the Oprah show, and then I saw him on Steven Colbert's show. So I fell for all the hype and bought the book. I understand he is not a writer and this is his first book but this book rambles on and jumps from one topic to another, I still don't see the point of the book. The only thing he has in common with the other Wes Moore is his name and the area where he once lived, many years earlier. What bothered me is that anyone can figure out the obvious, these two people are completely different. Just because you have the same last name and once lived in the same area does not mean anything. What is the purpose of this book? These two people could not have been raised more different, it's like comparing oranges to apples, there is no comparison. I just don't understand what the purpose of the book was? Two guys have the same name and one succeeded in life and one is in jail? I wonder why (sarcastic)? Another thing that really bothered me is, anyone knows that it's how you are raised, your family, your environment; he barely remarks on the other Wes Moore's environment. He quickly mentions the first time Wes smoked marijuana is when he found it in his mother's closet, the man she was living with was there when he came home high and laughed at him. He mentions that the other Wes Moore's mother was celebrating her baby's first birthday when she found out his own girlfriend was pregnant and his brother Tony already had a baby; apparently we guess his mother wasn't married, he sees his father on the couch of a relative's home and his dad asks who is he? The book jumps from one subject to the other with no explanation, with no reasoning, it's just very badly written. The "author's" life is completely different, his father passed away when he was only three, his one memory of his father was a fond memory. He knows his father loved him, his parents are educated, his grand parents are educated and accomplished in ministry, and he was surrounded by family and love. His mother did all she could to send him to the best private schools, even got him a lunch meeting with the Dean of Admissions at John Hopkins University and despite his weak SAT scores he miraculously got into John Hopkins. How and why he would compare his life with the other Wes Moore's life? We are all the product of our environment, we all have choices to make, some of us like the "author" Wes Moore got extremely lucky in life and in my opinion undeserving of acceptance into John Hopkins, much less a Rhode Scholarship, but ok he got one, good for him. He now has an over rated and over hyped book he somehow got people buying. There are so many better books out there that really explores the economic and social issues in a child's life and the difference a loving environment makes. I would have been more impressed if he was raised in an environment like the other Wes Moore and still made the right choices, that would have been an accomplishment. Does anyone need this book to tell you what statistics have already told us, a loving environment with family support, love and encouragement is better than an environment where your mom is on drugs, your father has abandoned you and your older brother you admire is a drug dealer? His life and this book is so over rated, God bless him for another amazing accomplishment.

4 out of 13 people found this review helpful.
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PGE

Posted April 30, 2010

Thank You

To those who drive down City streets and recognize the eyes of the many characters in this book, I challenge you not to look at them without a greater understanding. Wes Moore humbly portrays the tense hope that children born under these circumstances face each day. He illustrates what it takes to overcome great obstacles and how hard it is to find a bit of luck when it is so desparately needed. He portrays love in its many lights and manifestations while showing us the scary reality that hovers so closely over so many of our City children's lives. This book is a must read for anyone who is trying to understand what is going on with our kids and what they can do to help.
Thank you for such a beautifully written book.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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rizzomom

Posted May 28, 2010

Amazing

Everyone should read this book. It will give you an understanding of how important our roles as parents,family and mentors are to our youth. In each section the views of both Wes Moore's are expressed, giving you an insight of how they viewed the world. This book isn't only a great read for adults but for our youth as will. After completing the book, I gave it to my 14 year old nephew. He loved it so much that he started to tell his friends about it. I think this book should be given out in schools, so our youth can see that there are others that are experiencing the same situations they are, and that achieving excellence is possible. This book is just Amazing!!

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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jdudzinski

Posted January 8, 2012

Not entirely impressed.. 3 stars at best

Although the book The Other Wes Moore is used as a cautionary tale against what may happen to one who falls down the wrong path, it fails to uphold this standard in many ways. The book starts off by introducing the author, Wes Moore, and a man who shares the same name but a different fate. Both men grew up in the same area, had the same family problems, and had the same problems with school yet one Wes Moore becomes a Rhodes Scholar and an outstanding student while the other ends up in prison. Not only did this book leave the reader with many unanswered questions, it revealed the underlying answer to the story’s conflict: money. Without money the author would have never been able to attend military school. Without military school the author would have continued to do poorly in school and could have just as easily ended up as Wes Moore. The fact that money was one of the main reasons the author became who he was makes this story very unappealing and I think it sends the wrong message to our nation’s youth. Another thing that threw me off was a part in the story where the author, while attending military school, asks one of his friends Sean the question: “Do you think what life would ever be like if we never came here?” Sean simply replies, “About the same I guess”, and the author agrees with him so easily. The reason this throws me off is because I thought military school made the huge difference between the two Wes Moore’s yet the author makes it seem like his life would be the same if he had not attended the school. This leads me into my second reason of why this book was not captivating: it did not fully explain the characters’ stories. The book skipped around a lot and left many missing parts. For example when the author first attends military school he is very insubordinate and tries to escape, and by the start of the next chapter he becomes platoon sergeant and commands his own platoon. The book never fully explained what the author did in order to get to where he was. Some parts of the stories were overly developed while some, such as this part in particular, left the reader confused. All in all, this book had good intentions but failed to be the outstanding book I think it should have been. I feel like if this book was more precisely written and had fully developed its plot then it definitely would have deserved 4 or even 5 stars.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Angelos_Period_6

Posted January 2, 2012

Great book; Outlines the realities the lives of people living in a poverty stricken community and shows how one's decisions can lead to their success or failure.

Great book; at first glance this book looks interesting, but once you start it, you will soon see it is even more than that. The lives of two men with the same name but completely different fates is shown in this novel in a way that parallels them both in order to show their similarities and differences. As author Wes Moore slowly but surely matured, he began to understand the realities of life and worked hard to become an educated and successful man. The other Wes Moore seemed to know deep down the realities of becoming involved with the drug business but had no one to truly guide him given his father's absence and his mother struggling to make ends meet in a poverty stricken community. However, his affiliation with the drug game soon "snowballed" from a business in order to make ends meet to a violent and hate-filled life. When this lifestyle seemed to take him over, his life worsened as he spent time in and out of jail for various crimes. The reality is that either of these men could have had the other's life had they chosen their decisions in a different manner. The author does a good job of revealing this to the audience and leaves them with this idea to think about: how would things have been different if one of the two decided to act differently? While growing up, author Wes Moore saw the realities of the drug game and could have ended up in the same shoes as the other Wes Moore had it not been for the guidance of his mother. Similarly, the other Wes Moore could have just as easily turned his life around had he spent more time to think of how becoming involved in the drug game would affect his life. In reality our decisions are what make us who we are, and decide our fate in life. The only negative part of this book are the early parts of the book where the author describes the stories of each characters' families and how they ended up in the city that they did. But overall, this is a well-written book that does a great job of showing the importance of one's decisions and how anyone can change their life by thinking how their actions will influence where they end up in life.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted April 28, 2010

Can't put it down read

this book was very interesting and insightful...it is a shame that the police officer was killed and his family was left without him..Wes, the author also had to live without a father...but let's not look at the tragedy but what can become from it..the epilogue includes groups that need volunteers to help influence children in a good way..

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Quizzical_Bookworm

Posted April 13, 2012

Thought provoking...

This book is a testament to our current social policies. It illustrates the profound consequences the difficulty of accessing positive resources can have on an individual. It also demonstrates how a few small choices can change a life forever. I have to admit, I would very much like to read this story from the Other Wes Moore's point of view as well.
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Anonymous

Posted March 3, 2012

An excellent story of how families and influences help to determ

An excellent story of how families and influences help to determine our outcomes. Very easy to read. Great selection for a book club, teacher, youth counselor, pastor, parents, and even young teens that are dealing with peer pressure and overcoming self-doubt.
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jdudzinski94

Posted January 8, 2012

Not entirely impressed.. 3 stars at best

Although this book is supposed to be a cautionary tale against what may happen to one who falls down the wrong path, it fails to uphold this standard in many ways. The book starts off by introducing the author, Wes Moore, and a man who shares the same name but a different fate. Both men grew up in the same area, had the same family problems, and had the same problems with school yet one Wes Moore becomes a Rhodes Scholar and an outstanding student while the other ends up in prison. Not only did this book leave the reader with many unanswered questions, it revealed the underlying answer to the story’s conflict: money. Without money the author would have never been able to attend military school. Without military school the author would have continued to do poorly in school and could have just as easily ended up as Wes Moore. The fact that money was one of the main reasons the author became who he was makes this story very unappealing and I think it sends the wrong message to our nation’s youth. Another thing that threw me off was a part in the story where the author, while attending military school, asks one of his friends Sean the question: “Do you think what life would ever be like if we never came here?” Sean simply replies, “About the same I guess”, and the author agrees with him so easily. The reason this throws me off is because I thought military school made the huge difference between the two Wes Moore’s yet the author makes it seem like his life would be the same if he had not attended the school. This leads me into my second reason of why this book was not captivating: it did not fully explain the characters’ stories. The book skipped around a lot and left many missing parts. For example when the author first attends military school he is very insubordinate and tries to escape, and by the start of the next chapter he becomes platoon sergeant and commands his own platoon. The book never fully explained what the author did in order to get to where he was. Some parts of the stories were overly developed while some, such as this part in particular, left the reader confused. All in all, this book had good intentions but failed to be the outstanding book I think it should have been. I feel like if this book was more precisely written and had fully developed its plot then it definitely would have deserved 4 or even 5 stars.
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Anonymous

Posted November 23, 2011

Excellent!

I didn't want to read this for my book club. Once I started I couldn't put it down. Truly a story to have you think about what could have been for the other Wes Moore
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LosAngelesDan

Posted September 15, 2011

you can't go wrong with Tavis Smily

I watch the Tavis Smiley show on PBS. My list of must-read titles and authors grows every time he has a writer on his program. Mr. Moore is definitely on that list!
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9362469

Posted August 19, 2011

A story true too many times

This book was a wonderful insight into life. It goes to show that people could make a choice that could change your life in very drastic ways. Even just choosing not to cross the street could change the way something turns out.
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Dashiell3

Posted August 11, 2011

Overrated

There are many things in this book to be valued. It goes without saying that one of the overall messages - the danger of urban decay - is more topical than ever in some urban districts around the US.

However, the book itself was very erratic. Although all the woven stories were completed by the end, Moore jumped back and forth far too often than was needed to compare the two main characters, and delved into many unnecessary tangents.
He often interrupts the flow of things with statistics and facts about the environment.

While the occasional barrage of dates and studies gives some parts of the book a well-founded feel, as if it's a documentary, at the same time there are other parts that make it feel more like an over-dramatized work of fiction. Broad generalizations about troubled children, for instance, and descriptive tangents driven by emotions of other characters besides the protagonist, which, in reality, the author would have no way of knowing these real people were feeling. I think he got carried away with these emotional descriptions on many, many occasions. I think in the long run the story would have been a lot more powerful without this blend of dramatization and documentary-style statistics and facts. If he had just chosen one or the other.

Another theme I thought was rather presumptuously explored by Moore was that of the environment's role in a person's choices, versus free will. At one point, the convict Wes Moore tells the author that he wholeheartedly blames the environment for the decisions he made, for becoming a murderer and being put in jail. The author Wes Moore wholeheartedly disagrees. He seemed almost disgusted at the convict's remarks, that the convict wouldn't take responsibility for what he did and for all the people he harmed. Because the author Wes Moore takes responsibility for EVERYTHING that's happened to him in his life. After all, WHY WOULDN'T HE? He rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange, spoke in front of tens of thousands at INVESCO Field in Denver, JUST HOURS before Obama accepted the nomination and forty-five years TO THE DAY of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. he's climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, fought for his country, graduated an elite school college, helped troubled middle-school kids in Baltimore - this man thinks that everybody should aspire to life like his, and, through his "troubled" past, he wants his story to be that of a victorious enterprising. No matter how big of a role his DIFFERENT environment played.

Sure, they might have been born in the same city, they might have both grown up without a father, dealt with drugs (likes the hundreds of thousands of other people in the US at the time) but other than them sharing the same name, there isn't much at all similar about their environments, or them. The author had positive influences in his life. He was sent to military school, which was possibly best thing that could have happened to him, and it was done so AGAINST HIS WILL. To say that the other Wes Moore was presented with the same opportunities as the author is extremely presumptuous and on the verge of a downright lie. And even if the other Wes Moore was presented with the same opportunities, they weren't described very well in this book.

Read The Other Wes Moore if you want to help boost the author's overhyped ego.
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bcpoetry

Posted July 30, 2011

Great Book

Wes Moore reminds us all that in a moments time our lives can be changed in one direction or the other. It's a life story that should taught to all, most important our young.
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senated

Posted July 2, 2011

It makes you think, how did I get here?

An intersesting story on what influences determine where we end up in life. The fact that the two individuals had the same name and were from the same neighborhood makes you think of your own situation and wonder how things may have been different for people you grew up with or ,even for yourself
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Anonymous

Posted May 6, 2011

Empowering! This will now be the elementary school graduation gift I give all of the children in my life.

Shortly before he died, my father started planning to write a book about why some kids do and some kids don't "make it." After working as an educator for decades in the Chicago public school system, he recognized that was a story that needed desperately to be told. Wes Moore has told that story very well. As Lauryn Hill so eloquently stated, "consequence is no coincidence." Without judgement or excuses, Wes Moore carefully and thoughtfully illustrates how the choices made for and by these two young men resulted in very different consequences. Special note: I "read" the audio book version. It is read by the author. He has a great voice and the recording quality is excellent. Among the very best audio books I have "read."
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suzieh1

Posted April 4, 2011

more from this reviewer

great story

really makes you think how one moment or one person can alter the course of your life forever
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fab1nina

Posted March 4, 2011

recommended

great story of overcoming obstacles in life
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Anonymous

Posted February 7, 2011

Highly Recommended

WOW! I really enjoyed this book. I highlighted many parts in the book that give amazing insight to the things that shape who we become. It opened my eyes to the trials facing our youth in the impoverished inner city. One drawback of the book was at times it was difficult to know which Wes Moore the author was referring to.
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A powerful and insightful look into what makes us tick and the role our families and influences play in our outcomes. Already an accomplished human being, Wes Moore is still on an upward track and a rising star. This is a must read book!

Over hyped book

Thank You

Amazing

Not entirely impressed.. 3 stars at best

Great book; Outlines the realities the lives of people living in a poverty stricken community and shows how one's decisions can lead to their success or failure.

Can't put it down read

Thought provoking...

An excellent story of how families and influences help to determ

Not entirely impressed.. 3 stars at best

Excellent!

you can't go wrong with Tavis Smily

A story true too many times

Overrated

Great Book

It makes you think, how did I get here?

Empowering! This will now be the elementary school graduation gift I give all of the children in my life.

great story

recommended

Highly Recommended