Accidental Billionaires

By: Raymond Meng

From the beginning, The Accidental Billionaires captures your attention with vivid illustrations and detailed character interactions. With the backdrop of Harvard University as the main setting, the book provides a dynamic atmosphere of a prestigious campus and ambitious college students. The social dynamics and hierarchies, coupled with the up-close thoughts and actions of the protagonists, really give the reader a sense that they’re witnessing the scene unfold. Chic and contemporary, this book is a late-night reader that will make you flip the pages in anticipation.

A distinctive part of the books is that the author, Ben Mezrich, graduated from Harvard. With this background, he was able to have connections that ultimately led to the creation of his book. The origins of the book came from an email to Mezrich at 2 a.m. about a guy who knew someone was a co-founder of Facebook--and the public knew nothing about him: Eduardo Saverin. From then on, the author embarked on a mission to record the founding of Facebook and the controversies that surrounded the company from even before its inception. The accuracy and shocking revelations the book held was so filled with drama and twists, that it inevitably attracted attention from big film producers. Thus, The Social Network was born.

A peculiar aspect of the book is the sheer amount of insider information. From interesting facts about the culture of Harvard--to personal thoughts and interactions of the characters-- it had them all. When the book contained bits and pieces of dialogue, it was always followed by descriptions of either the setting or vivid thoughts of the characters. This always allowed the reader to gain a richer understanding of what was unfolding.

Something that I found cool about the structure of the book was how each subsequent chapter had different people as the chapter’s protagonist--so that meant the reader was dying to know what happened to the people they had just read about in one chapter, but were not allowed to know unless they kept on reading. At the end of each chapter, there was always a cliffhanger. For example, something like “nothing could go wrong, right?” or “Eduardo had no idea of what was about to unfold.” With these sentences at the end of the chapters pushing me along, I am proud to say that I finished the book in 2 days.

The style of the book was written in a conversational theme, meaning that it is very readable and engaging. I would rate this book a 9/10, but not a full score because it wasn’t long enough. Written with highly detailed descriptions, along with unique characters, The Accidental Billionaires is a great read.

Quotes that I found interesting:

pg 165, “At its essence, it was simply a matter of physics. Force versus an equal and opposite force. An object in motion tending to stay in motion, no matter how unusual, unwanted, or just plain annoying that motion happened to be. Force equals mass times velocity--there simply wasn’t any way around the physics of it; at 150 pounds soaking wet, Sean Parker had no way of stopping the oversize mahogany bureau from caterwauling down the steps of the front porch of the compact little bungalow--so he didn’t even try. Instead, he just stood there shaking his head as the damn thing rolled onto its side, landing with an ugly thud in a patch of grass next to the driveway.”

pg 172, “What happens when the guy standing next to you catches a lightning bolt? Does it carry you up to the stratosphere along with him? Or do you simply get charred trying to hold on?”

pg 69, “It might be interesting."