Review of the Accidental Billionaires

The Accidental Billionaires is in my opinion a work of fiction. While it claims to be the story of the reality behind the founding of arguable one of the most important websites in the history of the internet. I was at first surprised at the format of the book. A narrative form focusing on the view almost exclusively of Eduardo Saverin, Facebooks co-founder, was in my opinion not the most unbiased form that could have been used. In the book described by the author as not a work of fiction, we hear one side of the story. One side in one of the messiest legal battles that the world of high technology has seen in recent years, cannot in any scope be considered fact. Especially since while the book was being written, Saverin and Zuckerberg were engaged in a protracted legal battle. How anything coming from either of them during that time could be considered usable for writing anything other than glorified fiction. The book like the movie portrays Zuckerberg as the villain, the punk college kid who sold his friends and his soul to Big Business in order to gain himself wealth and fame. Now in any story there are at least two sides. In this one the number could go higher much much higher. What about Parker, the Winklevosses, and of course the proverbial black sheep in the room Mark Zuckerberg. For his part, Mezrich has tried to keep the book as neutral as possible, however with the subject matter and the situations involved, his best is not nearly good enough to give everyone a fair shake. The only thing I can say for this book is that for its worth it is entertaining in a dark kind of way. For anyone who really wanted to know what happened with the founding of Facebook this book does not clear the smoke in any way. It only adds its own smoke and places mirrors into the mix.