“I was surprised to find just how much we did have in common, aside from our names, and how much our narratives intersected before they faithfully diverged. Learning the details of his story helped me understand my own life and choices.” 

These lines reveal the impetus that drove Moore to write this book. Upon learning of the other Wes Moore, the author was fascinated by the parallels in their childhoods and the circumstances that lead their paths to diverge so widely that they became foils of each other. The contrasts that emerged in the course of examining this divergence helped Moore see his own history in a new and clearer light.

“Young boys are more likely to believe in themselves if they know that there’s someone, somewhere, who shares that belief.”

Mentorship emerges as a key theme in Chapter 2, as Moore recounts how Kwame Nkrumah befriended and mentored his grandfather. Mentors can make all the difference in a child’s life, teaching them confidence and self-esteem and helping them discover new opportunities. Mentors are particularly important for young black boys like Wes, whose only mentor was his drug-dealing older brother and who fell into the cycle of drugs and violence. The author would argue that the influence of a positive role model may have altered the course of Wes’s life.

“From everything you told me, both of us did some pretty wrong stuff when we were younger. And both of us had second chances. But if the situation or the context where you make the decisions don’t change, then second chances don’t mean too much, huh? I guess it’s hard sometimes to distinguish between second chances and last chances.” 

This book strives to answer why one Wes Moore ended up a with a successful career while the other wound up serving a life sentence. Although Moore ends the book with no satisfactory answer for why their lives played out so differently, he does identify choice and mindset as two factors that contributed to his success.