Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center
One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20004-3027
T 202/691-4000
Life Chances
THE OTHER WES MOORE:
One Name and Two Fates.
By Wes Moore.
Spiegel & Grau. 233 pp. $25
Fatherhood is a touchy subject among black American men. Well over half of black kids grow up in a household without a dad. No wonder black public figures ranging from Louis Farrakhan to Bill Cosby to President Barack Obama have exhorted black men to “step up” and be responsible fathers. Some liberal advocates dismiss these pleas as bootstrap sermons that blame poor blacks for systemic problems. Others, conservative and liberal alike, counter that the three pillars that once bolstered black Americans—community, school, and family—are now miserably failing at-risk black kids, not least because of the plague of deadbeat dads.
The Other Wes Moore chronicles the parallel lives of two black men from Baltimore’s hardscrabble turf. The author overcomes his financially challenged, fatherless childhood to become a husband, Rhodes Scholar, White House fellow, and investment banker. The “other” Wes Moore, who is two years older, emerges from a financially challenged, fatherless childhood to receive a life-without-parole sentence for his role in a cop slaying during a botched robbery in 2000. It’s as if Pudd’nhead Wilson met The Prince and the Pauper on the streets of black America. How did these two men wind up in such radically different places?
To read the rest of this article, please consider becoming a WQ subscriber, which allows online access to the current WQ issue as well as archive content. Other access options are below.
Research, browse, and discover more than 35 years of articles, essays, and reviews by preeminent scholars and writers. Our searchable archive of back issues is free for WQ subscribers.
 |
 |
 |
Subscribe today
to the WQ Online
and receive immediate access
to the WQ archive for a full year.
Subscribe Now
-
Rich Benjamin is the author of Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America, which earned a 2009 Editor’s Choice award from Booklist/The American Library Association. He is a senior fellow at Demos, a nonpartisan think tank.
more from this author >>
Prime Mover
MURIEL SPARK:The Biography.
By Martin Stannard.
W.W. Norton. 627 pp. $35
Pulse of the People
MADE IN AMERICA:A Social History of American Culture and Character.
By Claude S. Fischer.
Univ. of Chicago Press. 511 pp. $35
Islam’s Political Problem
THE FLIGHT OF THE INTELLECTUALS.By Paul Berman.
Melville House. 299 pp. $26
THE OTHER MUSLIMS:
Moderate and Secular.
Edited by Zeyno Baran.
Palgrave Macmillan. 211 pp. $30
