the accidental billionaires by ben mezrich

I'm as much of a sucker for a business narrative with reconstructed dialogue as anybody, but this books carries that gimmick way too far. This book is too poorly written to be worthwhile novel, and contains too much invention to trust as a non-fiction business biography. Ben lives in Boston with his wife, Tonya. He is a columnist for Boston Common and a contributor for Flush magazine. The Accidental Billionaires is a compulsively listenable story of innocence lost - and of the unusual creation of a company that has revolutionized the way hundreds of millions of people relate to one another.īen Mezrich, a Harvard graduate, has published ten books, including the New York Times best seller Bringing Down the House. The great irony is that while Facebook succeeded by bringing people together, its very success tore two best friends apart. The collegiate exuberance that marked their collaboration fell prey to the adult world of lawyers and money. Before long, Eduardo’s and Mark’s different ideas about Facebook created in their relationship faint cracks, which soon spiraled into out-and-out warfare. What followed - a real-life adventure filled with slick venture capitalists, stunning women, and six-foot-five-inch identical-twin Olympic rowers - makes for one of the most entertaining and compelling books of the year. In that moment, in his Harvard dorm room, the framework for Facebook was born. Which he used to find a more direct route to social stardom: One lonely night, Mark hacked into the university's computer system, creating a ratable database of all the female students on campus - and subsequently crashing the university's servers and nearly getting himself kicked out of school.

Mark, with less of an interest in what the campus alpha males thought of him, happened to be a computer genius of the first order.

They shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with women.Įduardo figured their ticket to social acceptance - and sexual success - was getting invited to join one of the university’s Final Clubs, a constellation of elite societies that had groomed generations of the most powerful men in the world and ranked on top of the inflexible hierarchy at Harvard. The high-energy tale of how two socially awkward Ivy Leaguers, trying to increase their chances with the opposite sex, ended up creating Facebook.Įduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were Harvard undergraduates and best friends - outsiders at a school filled with polished prep-school grads and long-time legacies.

The accidental billionaires by ben mezrich