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The Work is the story of how one young man traced a path through the world to find his life's purpose. Wes Moore graduated from a difficult childhood in the Bronx and Baltimore to an adult life that would find him at some of the most critical moments in our recent history: as a combat officer in Afghanistan; a White House fellow in a time of wars abroad and disasters at home; and a Wall Street banker during the financial crisis.
When viewed through an economic lens, poverty can be defined as an absence of resources. Since 1995, Framework's basic premise is that the middle-class understandings of those who work with children and adults in poverty are often ill-suited for connecting with and helping people build up resources and rise out of poverty. Now, 18 years and 1.5 million copies later, Framework: A Cognitive Approach has been revised, updated and expanded.
Raising My Rainbow is Lori Duron’s frank, heartfelt, and brutally funny account of her and her family's adventures of distress and happiness raising a gender-creative son. Whereas her older son, Chase, is a Lego-loving, sports-playing boy's boy, her younger son, C.J., would much rather twirl around in a pink sparkly tutu, with a Disney Princess in each hand while singing Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi".
Through the telling of events from his own life, Wes Moore (author of the best-selling adult title The Other Wes Moore) explores the issues that separate success and failure. He also counterpoints his story with another man, someone who shared the same name, was almost the same age, grew up fatherless in a similar Baltimore neighborhood, but is serving a life sentence for murder. Compelled to write to the other Wes, the author was surprised to receive a reply. And so began a friendship, as letters turned into visits and the two men got to know one another.
Deena Kastor was a star youth runner with tremendous promise, yet her career almost ended after college, when her competitive method - run as hard as possible, for fear of losing - fostered a frustration and negativity and brought her to the brink of burnout. On the verge of quitting, she took a chance and moved to the high altitudes of Alamosa, Colorado, where legendary coach Joe Vigil had started the first professional distance-running team. There she encountered the idea that would transform her running career: the notion that changing her thinking - shaping her mind to be more encouraging, kind, and resilient - could make her faster than she’d ever imagined possible.
Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag". In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard. Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism.
The Work is the story of how one young man traced a path through the world to find his life's purpose. Wes Moore graduated from a difficult childhood in the Bronx and Baltimore to an adult life that would find him at some of the most critical moments in our recent history: as a combat officer in Afghanistan; a White House fellow in a time of wars abroad and disasters at home; and a Wall Street banker during the financial crisis.
When viewed through an economic lens, poverty can be defined as an absence of resources. Since 1995, Framework's basic premise is that the middle-class understandings of those who work with children and adults in poverty are often ill-suited for connecting with and helping people build up resources and rise out of poverty. Now, 18 years and 1.5 million copies later, Framework: A Cognitive Approach has been revised, updated and expanded.
Raising My Rainbow is Lori Duron’s frank, heartfelt, and brutally funny account of her and her family's adventures of distress and happiness raising a gender-creative son. Whereas her older son, Chase, is a Lego-loving, sports-playing boy's boy, her younger son, C.J., would much rather twirl around in a pink sparkly tutu, with a Disney Princess in each hand while singing Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi".
Through the telling of events from his own life, Wes Moore (author of the best-selling adult title The Other Wes Moore) explores the issues that separate success and failure. He also counterpoints his story with another man, someone who shared the same name, was almost the same age, grew up fatherless in a similar Baltimore neighborhood, but is serving a life sentence for murder. Compelled to write to the other Wes, the author was surprised to receive a reply. And so began a friendship, as letters turned into visits and the two men got to know one another.
Deena Kastor was a star youth runner with tremendous promise, yet her career almost ended after college, when her competitive method - run as hard as possible, for fear of losing - fostered a frustration and negativity and brought her to the brink of burnout. On the verge of quitting, she took a chance and moved to the high altitudes of Alamosa, Colorado, where legendary coach Joe Vigil had started the first professional distance-running team. There she encountered the idea that would transform her running career: the notion that changing her thinking - shaping her mind to be more encouraging, kind, and resilient - could make her faster than she’d ever imagined possible.
Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag". In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard. Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism.
When author Jeff Hobbs arrived at Yale University, he became fast friends with the man who would be his college roommate for four years, Robert Peace. Robert's life was rough from the beginning in the crime-ridden streets of Newark in the 1980s, with his father in jail and his mother earning less than $15,000 a year. But Robert was a brilliant student, and it was supposed to get easier when he was accepted to Yale, where he studied molecular biochemistry and biophysics.
Thirty-five-year-old Kate Bowler was a professor at the school of divinity at Duke, and had finally had a baby with her childhood sweetheart after years of trying, when she began to feel jabbing pains in her stomach. She lost 30 pounds, chugged antacid, and visited doctors for three months before she was finally diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer. As she navigates the aftermath of her diagnosis, Kate pulls the listener deeply into her life, which is populated with a colorful, often hilarious collection of friends, pastors, parents, and doctors.
Neil White, a journalist and magazine publisher, wanted the best for those he loved - nice cars, beautiful homes, luxurious clothes. He loaned money to family and friends and invested in his community - but his bank account couldn't keep up. Soon White began moving money from one account to another to avoid bouncing checks. His world fell apart when the FBI discovered his scheme and a judge sentenced him to serve 18 months in a federal prison. But it was no ordinary prison. The beautiful, isolated colony in Carville, Louisiana, was also home to the last people in the continental United States disfigured by leprosy.
One of the comedy world's fastest-rising stars tells his wild coming of age story during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed. Noah provides something deeper than traditional memoirists: powerfully funny observations about how farcical political and social systems play out in our lives.
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to 12 years for a crime Celestial knows he didn't commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding.
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned - from the layout of the winding roads to the colors of the houses to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren - an enigmatic artist and single mother - who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter, Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons.
In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. Yet, as legal star Michelle Alexander reveals, today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against convicted criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans.
A fierce memoir of a mother's murder, a daughter's coming-of-age in the wake of immense loss, and her ultimate mission to know the woman who gave her life.
"This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it." In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of "race", a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men.
Justyce McAllister is top of his class and set for the Ivy League - but none of that matters to the police officer who just put him in handcuffs. And despite leaving his rough neighborhood behind, he can't escape the scorn of his former peers or the ridicule of his new classmates. Justyce looks to the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for answers. But do they hold up anymore? He starts a journal to Dr. King to find out.
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.
Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family's Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge - until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children's Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents - but they quickly realize the dark truth.
In The Other Wes Moore, author Wes Moore narrates his memoir of two little boys who become very different men. Both African American, fatherless, exposed to crime at an early age, Wes Moore, the author, and Wes Moore, the other, share both a name and a history, but live very different lives today. This book is an examination of why, as well as a call to action.
Moore narrates his book and his voice is solid and rich tones deepened by the streets, and consonants and vowels shaped and buffed by a good education. Proud, but never boastful, Moore tells his story of education, military service, and leadership. And, in a somber and respectful voice, he tells a parallel story: one of crime, broken families, and incarceration the life of the other Wes Moore.
The memoir is part self-examination and part anthropological and sociological study of inner-city America. Throughout, Moore searches for the answer to the question: “What made the difference?” Why did he become a White House fellow and serve his country in Afghanistan while the other Wes Moore was charged with killing a police officer and now serves a life sentence?
The author offers no pat answers, no quaint life lessons just hard truths. He is neither sympathetic nor judgmental he makes no excuses for the tragic loss of Sergeant Bruce Prothero, the police officer the other Wes Moore was eventually convicted of killing. He also shows us the other side of his doppelganger poignantly describing the other Moore’s careful work during shop class at trade school on a playhouse for his daughter.
Wes Moore speaks from the perspective of someone who has known fear and disillusionment, but also with a voice that has said, “Yes, sir,” and “Will you marry me?” and “Thank you.” This is the voice that calls the listener to want to make a difference in the lives of young people in this country. Sarah Evans Hogeboom
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 has 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.
If you ever thought your life was written out in the stars, or that you were dealt a bad hand at birth due various reasons, reading this book should change your mind. You can be anything or anyone you want to be, with people around you who believe in you. That might be the most important part, that not only is your fate not written in stone at birth, but you have to listen to the role models around you in order to succeed. You might have to leave your present neighborhood because too many people do not have an interest in seeing you succeed. As a matter of fact, to the contrary, they might want to see you fail because "misery loves company." The same idea of writing your own ticket with your own self-adopted mentors is also described in the autobiography, I Beat the Odds by Michael Oher. It is a fabulous book written by an amazingly reflective young man. These two books should be required high school reading (especially in inner city or rural schools) along with the 7 Habits of Highly Successful Teens, and The Four Agreements.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful
this is a great story I highly recommend especially to young pople struggling to find themselves
This was an amazing book with such unique stories. The beat part is that Wes Moore does the narration. It makes it that much more enjoyable.
I liked the story for the majority but it seemed to me like it was just a book campaign throwing down the other Wes Moore saying that through perseverance he succeeded when in actually he didn’t really do all that much, he just had the components for him to succeed and all I hear from the book is “Buy my book because now I’m successful” I’m not a huge fan, I would have rather heard the story from the other Wes Moore’s perspective.
This is one of the best books I have ever read/listened to. It was so real. The experience of two people having similar but parallel lives. It’s a must read for any adolescent. Junior high and high school English teacher should really consider using this book in their curriculum. It’s thought provoking and makes a great class discussions that other wise young people wouldn’t have at home.
loved it. very powerful story and a good reminder to all about the choices we make in life
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes. Everything about this story is worth your time and Audio books narrated by it's own author (who is a good reader) is an added bonus.
What did you like best about this story?
Wes tells his story in parallel to the story of the Wes Moore who is serving a life sentence for murder. Both men grew up blocks apart, without fathers, were they were faced daily with similar choices which would determine their fate. One ended up a Rhodes Scholar, a highly respected military man and a world traveler. The other, serving a life sentence in a tiny cell because of a grievous mistake.
Wes' stories brings a stark awareness that these stories not only belong to them, but could be anyone's- all of ours... it reminds us that every man was once an innocent boy who walked the path in front of him and it calls us readers to action- to be aware and concerned and care about these boys - all of them and not simply leave them to walk into their own fate- but be an instrument for change for the better.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
This is such an important and relevant subject for anyone- white, black, male or female to read and a conversation to keep listening to.
Any additional comments?
Wes Moore the author, was a pleasure to listen too and his story is well worth your time. His story includes so many others that are all worth listening too.
Would you consider the audio edition of The Other Wes Moore to be better than the print version?
I don't know because i haven't read the print version. This is a great to listen to in the car or on the go.
What did you like best about this story?
The segment of the military school for the author was easily my favorite.
What about Wes Moore’s performance did you like?
HIS VOICE CHANGE! hes an incredible actor. especially because this is his story.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
yes! when the other wes moore is part of the robbery but just finished vocational school.
Any additional comments?
GREAT READ! please listen to this and allow the differences in our racist culture to sink in.
Interesting story about two guys who share a name and some geography, but whose lives take totally different paths. The book does not attempt to explain why it just provides the facts of one success story and one horribly sad story.
A powerful coming-of-age true story that magnifies the ever lasting impact of
choices on our lives!