The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore

This is the best book I have read in a while.  It is a New York Times bestselling true story about how family, accountability, chance, and fate influence our lives.  Considering the racial tension in the news recently, it was a timely read.

The author is Wes Moore.  He was raised in poor, inner city Baltimore.  His father died when he was young.  As a teenager, his mother moved him to the Bronx, where they lived with his grandparents. Wes was in and out of school.  He spent time on the streets with other kids and getting into trouble, including encounters with the police.  Eventually, these problems led his mother to send him to Valley Forge military school.  He resented this, but without any way to leave, military school grew on him. Wes learned responsibility.  He became a military officer.  Ultimately, he graduated and went to Johns Hopkins University, was a Rhodes Scholar, a veteran of Afghanistan, and a White House Fellow.  He also spoke in Denver at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, just hours before Obama accepted the nomination.

In 2000, Wes read a story in the Baltimore Sun about a botched armed robbery that killed a police officer.  They were still looking for two suspects, a pair of brothers, one of which was named Wes Moore.  The police found them.  This other Wes Moore was convicted and given life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Wes Moore, the author, contacted this other Wes Moore.  He learned that the other Wes Moore also grew up in inner city Baltimore, in a similar neighborhood.  Like the author, this Wes was also fatherless, in and out of school, lived on the streets, and had trouble with the police.  He had been arrested multiple times before and got into the drug game at an early age.

The author started a correspondence that resulted in this book.  He interviewed many people to learn the other Wes' story.  Despite the similarities, one became a successful person and husband, while the other is spending his life in Jessup Correctional Institution in Maryland.

The author wondered: How did it go wrong? and What made the difference?  His answer:

"And the truth is that I don't know.  The answer is elusive.  People are wildly different, and it's hard to know when genetics or environment or just bad luck is decisive.  As I've puzzled over the issue, I've become convinced that there are some clear and powerful measures that can be taken during this crucial time in a young person's life.  Some of the ones that helped me come to mind, from finding strong mentors to being entrusted with responsibilities that forced me to get serious about my behavior."

The author Wes Moore had a stronger family bond.  He was given hope and taught to see his life beyond his immediate circumstances and to see the possibilities within himself.  In other words, those in his life had better expectations for him.

For the other Wes Moore, when all you know is poverty and violence, education is a joke, your father is absent and your mother has problems too, and your drug gang is the closest thing you have to family, then what choice do you have?  You have to pay the bills and put food on the table.  The money that you can make from drugs, up to $4,000 per day, is better than a real job paying $9 per hour, if that.  Society tends to see inner city blacks as thugs or felons and to fear them.  It doesn't understand what it's really like for them.  My life is too different for me to truly relate or understand, myself.  But it's clear that this environment is not conducive to lifting people toward a better future.  To demonize the people themselves is blind to this reality.

Ultimately, are we products of our environment or of expectations, either ours or others, or is it something else that makes us who we are?  Like the author, I don't know.  But I think sometimes it's the small interactions and the helping hand of others that can make all the difference in a person's life.

Here is a short video from Wes Moore about his book: