The Not So Social Billionaires

By Nick L.

            In "The Accidental Billionaires: by Ben Mezrich readers get the inside scoop to how the site they waste their life away on came to be. Mezrich is also the author behind Bringing Down The House, a New York Times best seller. Readers get a food read from best selling author with this book.

            The book puts the reader inside the heads of Eduardo Salverin the CFO of thefacebook, the Winklevoss twins, Sean Parker, and the man himself Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg is the type of guy that keeps all the characters wondering about him; behind his nerdyness is there a hidden cool?  Zuckerberg isn’t your typical Harvard nerd, in high school he was a hacker and already created a network for Harvard students to see who were in their classes.

One night Zuckerberg gets drunk and hacks into all the houses on campus to create a site where guys rated the girls in every house. Over night 85% of Harvard went on the site, this was the start of Facebook. The story is primarily told through the head of best friend and CFO Eduardo Salverin. Salverin is desperately searching for the social side of Harvard. He is pledging for a social club in Harvard so he can meet girls, ironically enough he helps create the largest social club in the world. To the two of them the dream was simple make being social and meeting girls easier. The dream gets complicated when thefacebook takes off quick and gets complicated when Olympic rower twins the Winklevoss’s and Silicon Valley bad boy Sean Parker get involved. The cover of the book truly does tell it all, a story of sex, money, genius, and betrayal.

            Mezrich does the story behind Facebook justice through his writing. Mezrich goes to great lengths to describe what being at Harvard is like through social cues and descriptive settings. The switching between narrators is done well and helps to build a like for all the characters. He builds all of them up well and it is hard to pick a side because of the connection the reader has to all of them. One critique to his writing is that it is too short. The book is roughly 250 pages. Mezrich does a phenomenal job telling the story but leaves the reader wanting a little more. Also the man himself Mark Zuckerberg is almost too mysterious; the reader does not get much time inside his head. Him being the genius behind the whole thing the reader wants to get more time with him as narrator but they do not. Further building up the mystery behind him.

I would recommend this book to anyone; it’s a great story and deserves a read. Although there is a movie, the book gives more details and puts you in all the characters heads.

The Accidental Billionaires, by Ben Mezrich, DoubleDay, 2009, 256 pages