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Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were Harvard undergraduates and best friends–outsiders at a school filled with polished prep-school grads and long-time legacies. They shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with women.
Eduardo 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. 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.
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. In that moment, in his Harvard dorm room, the framework for Facebook was born.
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. 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. The collegiate exuberance that marked their collaboration fell prey to the adult world of lawyers and money. The great irony is that while Facebook succeeded by bringing people together, its very success tore two best friends apart.
The Accidental Billionaires is a compulsively readable 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.
Ben Mezrich, a Harvard graduate, has published ten books, including the New York Times bestseller Bringing Down the House. He is a columnist for Boston Common and a contributor for Flush magazine. Ben lives in Boston with his wife, Tonya.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
July 14, 2009 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781415965672
- File size: 210768 KB
- Duration: 07:19:05
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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THE ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRES explores the improbable history of the Web site Facebook, and how it started as a way for college guys to meet girls. The author admits that he made up the dialog and some scenes, so how accurate his story is will be open to suspicion. Any weakness in the book is the fault of the author, not Mike Chamberlain, who reads the work. Chamberlain gives the book just the right pacing, making it engaging, easy to listen to, and at times hard to put down. The author's plotting is episodic, even choppy at times, and it detracts from the overall dramatic arc. Yet Chamberlain's voice makes the book go down so much more easily in audio than in print. Clearly, the reader is the best part of this audio. R.C.G. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
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