Ben Mezrich - Written Work

Written Work

Mezrich is best known for his first non-fiction work, Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions (ISBN 0-7432-4999-2). This book tells the story of a group of students from MIT who bet on blackjack games using a sophisticated card counting system, earning millions of dollars at casinos in Las Vegas and other gambling centers in the United States and the Caribbean. The story was made into the movie 21, released in 2008.. Despite being categorised as non-fiction many of the characters in Bringing Down the House are comopsite characters and some of the events described have been contested by the people the characters are based on.

In 2004, Mezrich published a new book called Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions (ISBN 0-06-057500-X). Also a nonfiction work, this book recounts the exploits of an American named John Malcolm, who was an assistant securities trader.

In 2005 Mezrich published Busting Vegas: The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees (ISBN 0-06-057512-3) a semi-sequel to Bringing Down the House. The book tells the story of another student involved in a similar Blackjack team, but one that used more advanced techniques than the ones discussed in the first book. As with Bringing Down the House many of the events depicted in Busting Vegas were later contested by main character Semyon Dukach who described the book as "only about half true".

In 2007, Mezrich published Rigged (ISBN 0-06-125272-7) which recounts a largely fictional account of the formation of what would eventually become the Dubai Mercantile Exchange by two young visionaries, one in the New York Mercantile Exchange and the other in the Dubai Ministry of Finance.

Mezrich published a new book in July 2009 about Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, titled The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal (ISBN 0-385-52937-6). It debuted at #4 on the New York Times Nonfiction Bestseller List, and #1 on the Boston Globe Nonfiction Bestseller List, and the subsequent controversy surrounding it earned Mezrich the nickname "The Jackie Collins of Silicon Valley." In a recent interview on Conspiracy Worldwide Radio, Mezrich discussed his relationship with Zuckerberg and his motivation when writing the book. The Social Network, a movie based on the book was released on 1 October 2010. It stars Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg and Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin. The screenplay was written by Aaron Sorkin.