The accidental Billionaires - book review

I read The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich after I saw the movie The Social Network, which based its plot largely on the book.

The tagline of the book is (on the UK version) Sex, Money, Betrayal and the Founding of Facebook, but the book is not so much about Sex, or the Founding of Facebook. While the latter is the circumstance to which the story is set, it is largely about the impact of Facebook's success, on the friendship between Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin.

I read this book not thinking of these characters as real people, because that somehow makes me feel like a stalker, plus it shapes my opinion on characters too much before reading. As characters, they are well written college boys with a great amount of luck. I loved each character as often as I absolutely hated them, which I'd like to complement Ben Mezrich for. It makes the book and the relationships very dynamic and makes you question your allegiance to the characters more than once.

I found this book largely entertaining, but that's exactly what it is: entertainment. No deep sociological novel, not a true account of the people's lives it's based on. But it's not pretending to be any one of those things; all in all a good book.

Buy it on Amazon by clicking the picture.