The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore

From The Week of May 16, 2010

As our population grows, and as the social fabric of the Internet brings that population closer together, the odds of encountering someone who shares your exact name will increase, probably sharply. But even if this becomes more common, we will never top the story of the two Wes Moores.

Only two years apart, two boys are born with the same name, into the same Baltimore neighborhood. They walked the same streets, struggled with the same poverty, and yet neither they nor their families ever crossed paths. One Moore moved to New York, struggled in school, wound up in military school, rebelled and then finally settled down into a stable, productive life as a financial analyst, army veteran and author, specifically of this book. The other Moore stayed in Baltimore, dealt drugs, killed a cop and is currently serving a life sentence. Two lives headed in exactly the same direction until a moment in time forced a divergence, ascending one Moore to success and plummeting the other into Hell. The two may never have crossed paths were it not for the author Moore seeing his own name in the newspaper, a warrant issued for his arrest for a robbery gone wrong. And after he realized it was the other Wes Moore, he began to follow the case, to speak with the other Moore, to learn how they had come to such different ends.

Yes, this is a self-indulgent rumination on a trivial connection. There is, after all, nothing overly karmic in a name. It's not like the author Moore's success robbed the other Moore of his fair share. We are the result of our circumstances and our experiences. But the sheer similarity of their backgrounds was novel enough to carry me into the book's core theme. On what decisions does the success of a life hinge? What moments set us on the good path as opposed to the ruinous? And though Mr. Moore, the author, leans towards self-righteousness at times, he had the curiosity and the diligence to investigate and ask, and reflect. And, by in large, The Other Wes Moore is the successful outcome of his musings. (3/5 Stars)