In 2000, the name Wes Moore appeared in the Baltimore Sun. Twice. As it turns out, there were two different Wes Moores being covered -- one, for his achievement as a Rhodes scholar, and the other for his involvement in an armed robbery that resulted in murder. But the Moores, only two years apart in age, had more in common than one might think. Each grew up in a single-parent household (both without fathers), in the same rough Baltimore neighborhood, and both had had early encounters with the law.

“The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates” -- written by the younger of the two -- describes a classic “Road Not Taken” scenario. As the “two roads diverged” each young man chose a different path and wound up with wildly opposite futures. The Rhodes scholarship was just one of many measures of success for the author. Moore went on to become a paratrooper and captain in the United States Army, a special assistant to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the (current) host of Beyond Belief  on the Oprah Winfrey Network, and, as a result of this book, a national bestselling author. The “other” Moore ended up in prison with a life sentence. “The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his,” Moore says in the book’s introduction.

In “The Other Wes Moore”, the author tells of his fascination with Moore’s story. Years went by, and he couldn’t let it go, which brought him to eventually contact and essentially befriend Moore. Before that, he had trouble explaining his attraction to the case. Yet the parallels and the author’s detail of them -- he compares the lives of both Moores in an effort to understand their different directions -- are strong enough to pull readers in page after page. Ultimately, the book is not just a tale of an odd juxtaposition, but also a commentary about a society that allows this story to exist, and a call to action to try and change things for the future. Listen to the excerpt below for a sampling of this powerful story.