In which trek reviews The Accidental Billionaires

One of Neatnik's fellow Brownie Scouts just happens to be the daughter of a pair of old high school classmates of mine, RoadRunner and T-Sax. We lost touch during the college years but sort of reconnected when our daughters ended up being enrolled in the same pre-k program. RoadRunner recently read a book which she said was riveting and she loaned it to me during the last scout meeting. The book was The Accidental Billionairesby Ben Mezrich.

While I am not "on" that particular social networking site, I knew that there were court cases involving ownership of the company and the news has been liberally splashed recently with claims about the abuses of private data. Since I wanted to become a bit more informed, I read the book and I researched some of the articles listed as primary sources.

This book opens at a party on the Harvard campus in October 2003 and retells the events of the next 24 months. Two parallel stories of trust and betrayal are told in these pages; the first is the tale of the founders, the beginning of their friendship, their association in the early days of development and launch, and their subsequent falling out and legal battle; the second story is the claims made by another trio of Harvard students that the idea for this web site was theirs and that their intellectual property was stolen.

Where is the truth in this maelstrom of accusation and counter-accusation? It would be nice to say, "Here, this is the truth", but I suppose that each individual must make up his/her own mind.

Perhaps it was the author's intent to draw the reader into the language of the current college scene, but the scatological language used throughout the text is inappropriate for polite conversation. Such misuse of language and the author's poor writing style made the book an unenjoyable read.

Even if the text has been of higher literary quality, however, I do not think I would have enjoyed this book. The key programmer is described as self-absorbed, socially autistic, and interested in women for one thing only, who is willing to lie, cheat, and betray anyone who disagrees with him; doesn't sound like the kind of guy I'd like to invite over for dinner.