Wes Moore—Rhodes scholar, army officer and one-time Special Assistant to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice—discovered one day in a newspaper article that he shared a name with someone whose life had taken a far different turn. Though they were born only a year apart in the same Baltimore neighborhood, the other Wes Moore was now doomed to spend the rest of his life in prison after committing a robbery that culminated in the death of a police officer. Determined to discover how two people from such similar backgrounds could wind up in vastly different circumstances, one Wes Moore decided to research the other.

The Other Wes Moore shows there are no easy explanations. Moore the author makes no attempt to justify the imprisoned Moore’s actions, even while detailing a familiar litany of neglect, absence of male role models and bad choices. The successful Wes Moore also shows he was far from perfect in his youth, but thanks to his loving family’s insistence that he fulfill his potential, he excelled in academics and forged a satisfying career. Through hundreds of interviews, not only with his namesake, but with police, social workers and others, Moore’s book reaffirms the impact that even one tough parent can have on a child’s ultimate success or failure.

It also dispels some myths, most notably the contention that everyone who grows up in the mean streets eventually either emulates the negative behavior surrounding them or is overcome by it. Writer and journalist Moore emphatically says the other Wes Moore is not a victim. But he does see him as another person who fell through the cracks. Their one-on-one discussions crackle with intensity, as the two men frequently disagree. Still, the author continually wrestles with  the reality that they aren’t nearly as different as their social positions indicate.

While in prison, Moore has acknowledged his guilt, converted to Islam, become a grandfather and accepted the fact that he’ll probably never be released. The two Moores share the priority of keeping other young men, especially black kids, from mimicking his behavior and making the same mistakes. The Other Wes Moore contains a detailed resource guide, providing parents with the names of organizations that can help them in times of need and offer counsel before problematic cases degenerate into hopeless outcomes. He knows he can’t save everyone, but Wes Moore is determined to do whatever he can to prevent the emergence of more “other Wes Moore” situations.

If you’ve never pored over the real estate section long after your coffee has gone lukewarm, or gone to an open house for a place you have absolutely no intention of buying, you are a better person than I am. There is something beguiling, almost voyeuristic, about peeking into someone else’s home and imagining yourself living there.

The siren song of house-shopping has never been so exquisitely or cannily captured as in Meghan Daum’s memoir, which is ostensibly about her search for the perfect house. But it’s about so much more. She traces her parents’ own peripatetic tendencies (the family lived in Texas, California, Illinois and New Jersey during her childhood) and how it affected her own skewed definition of home. Daum moved no fewer than 10 times during her four years at Vassar College. After college, she did a stint in a pre-war apartment in Manhattan, followed by a move to a drafty farmhouse in Lincoln, Nebraska (where she based her thoroughly wonderful 2003 novel, The Quality of Life Report), before landing permanently (maybe) in Los Angeles just before the housing bubble burst.

Only after she dragged her possessions from one coast to the other did she realize that maybe the nomad routine was more about her search for identity than her search for shelter. It was about her need to live somewhere that would make her “downright fabulous.” Friends and potential suitors had to point at her latest choice of residence and say: “ ‘She’s no Ally McBeal in a twee Boston apartment with her roommate and hallucinations of maternal longing; she’s Jennifer Beals living alone with her pit bull in her loft in Flashdance. . . . She may not have a farm, but she’s still got a little Willa Cather in her. Someone buy this woman a drink!’ ”

Funny, self-deprecating and wise, Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House is a joyously honest look at what Daum calls “mastering the nearly impossible art of how to be at home.”