Ben Mezrich

Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg - an awkward maths prodigy and a painfully shy computer genius - were never going to fit in at elite, polished Harvard. Yet that all changed when master-hacker Mark crashed the university's entire computer system by creating a rateable database of female students. Narrowly escaping expulsion, the two misfits refocused the site into something less controversial - 'The Facebook' - and watched as it spread like a wildfire across campuses around the country, along with their popularity. Yet amidst the dizzying levels of cash and glamour, as silicon valley, venture capitalists and reams of girls beckoned, the first cracks in their friendship started to appear, and what began as a simple argument spiralled into an out-and-out war. The great irony is that Facebook succeeded by bringing people together - but its very success tore two best friends apart.

Ben Mezrich's 2009 bestseller The Accidental Billionaires is the definitive account of Facebook's founding - and the basis for the Academy Award-winning film The Social Network. Two of the story's iconic characters are Harvard students Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss: identical twins, Olympic rowers, and legal foils to MarkZuckerberg. Bitcoin Billionaires is the story of the brothers' redemption and revenge in the wake of their epic legal battle with Facebook - and the first great book from the world of bitcoin.Planning to start careers as venture capitalists, the brothers quickly discover that no one will take their money for fear of alienating Zuckerberg. While nursing their wounds in Ibiza, they accidentally run into a shady character who tells them about a brand new idea: cryptocurrency. Immersing themselves in what is then an obscure and sometimes sinister world, they begin to realize "crypto" is, in their own words, "either the next big thing or total bulls--t." There's nothing left to do but make a bet.From the Silk Road to the halls of the Securities and Exchange Commission to the Facebook boardroom, Bitcoin Billionaires will take us on a wild and surprising ride while illuminating a tantalizing economic future. On November 26th, 2017, the Winklevoss brothers became the first bitcoin billionaires. Here's the story of how they got there - as only Ben Mezrich could tell it.

Real-life all too rarely offers stories that are quite as satisfying as fiction. TWENTY-ONE is one of the exceptions. Cheating in casinos is illegal; card-counting - making a record of what cards have so far been dealt to enable the player to make some prediction of what cards remain in the deck - is not. But casinos understandably dislike the practice and make every effort to keep card-counters out of their premises. TWENTY-ONE tells the true story of the most successful scam ever, in which teams of brilliant young mathematicians and physicists won millions of dollars from the casinos of Las Vegas, being drawn in the process into the high-life of drugs, high-spending and sex. TWENTY-ONE is as readable and as fascinating as Liar''s Poker or Barbarians At the Gate, an insight into a closed, excessive and utterly corrupt world.

The New York Times bestselling author of Bringing Down the House and The Accidental Billionaires tells his most incredible story yet: A true drama of obscene wealth, crime, rivalry, and betrayal from deep inside the world of billionaire Russian oligarchs that Booklist called "one more example of just how talented a storyteller [Mezrich] is."Meet two larger-than-life Russians: former mathematician Boris Berezovsky, who moved into more lucrative ventures as well as politics, becoming known as the Godfather of the Kremlin; and Roman Abramovich, a dashing young entrepreneur who built one of Russia's largest oil companies from the ground up.After a chance meeting on a yacht in the Caribbean, the men became locked in a complex partnership, surfing the waves of privatization after the fall of the Soviet regime and amassing mega fortunes while also taking the reins of power in Russia. With Berezovsky serving as the younger entrepreneur's krysha--literally, his roof, his protector--they battled their way through the "Wild East" of Russia until their relationship soured when Berezovsky attacked President Vladimir Putin in the media. Dead bodies trailed Berezovsky as he escaped to London, where an associate died painfully of Polonium poisoning, creating an international furor. As Abramovich prospered, Berezovsky was found dead in a luxurious London town house, declared a suicide.With unprecedented, exclusive first-person sourcing, Mezrich takes us inside a world of unimaginable wealth, power, and corruption to uncover this exciting story, a true-life thriller epic for our time--"Wolf Hall on the Moskva" (Bookpage).

Real-life all too rarely offers stories that are quite as satisfying as fiction. Bringing Down the House is one of the exceptions. Cheating in casinos is illegal; card-counting - making a record of what cards have so far been dealt to enable the player to make some prediction of what cards remain in the deck - is not. But casinos understandably dislike the practice and make every effort to keep card-counters out of their premises. Bringing Down the House tells the true story of the most successful scam ever, in which teams of brilliant young mathematicians and physicists won millions of dollars from the casinos of Las Vegas, being drawn in the process into the high-life of drugs, high-spending and sex. Bringing Down the House is as readable and as fascinating as Liar''s Poker or Barbarians At the Gate, an insight into a closed, excessive and utterly corrupt world.

Nomeado o melhor livro do ano pelo New York Post O autor best-seller Ben Mezrich faz um relato cativante e detalhado de como um grupo pouco organizado de investidores privados e trolls de um subreddit chamado WallStreetBets derrubou um dos maiores hedge funds de Wall Street, dando o primeiro tiro de uma revoluço que ameaça subverter o sistema. Esta e a historia de tits financeiros como Gabe Plotkin, do hedge fund Melvin Capital, um dos mais respeitados e serios hedge funds em Wall Street; bilionarios como Elon Musk, Steve Cohen, Mark Cuban; os coCEOs da Robinhood, Vlad Tenev e Baiju Bhatt; e Ken Griffin, da Citadel Securities. No decorrer de quatro dias incriveis, cada um deve, a sua maneira, lidar com uma força formidavel que eles mal compreendem ou puderam prever; homens e mulheres comuns no WallStreetBets, como a enfermeira Kim Campbell, o estudante universitario Jeremy Poe e o enigmatico Keith "Gatinho Rugidor" Gill, cujas transmisses ao vivo sem cortes cativaram uma nova geraço de entusiastas do mercado de açes.

Um assalto ao Museu Gardner e o segredo mais fascinante da história norte-americana têm uma conexão oculta. E quem descobre isso involuntariamente é uma simples estudante de pós-graduação do MIT. Apó

La salvaje lucha de David contra el Goliat de las finanzas que cambió Wall Street para siempreA principios de 2021, un grupo poco coordinado de inversores privados y troles de internet, que intercambiaban mensajes sobre acciones y mercados en una pagina web, consiguio algo inesperado: tumbar uno de loshedge funds mas importantes de Wall Street. Fue el primer disparo de una revolucion que amenaza con acabar con el sistema financiero tal y como lo conocemos.Este libro vertiginoso y osado reconstruye la historia de ese acontecimiento inedito. Sus protagonistas son titanes de la inversion, millonarios como Elon Musk, los creadores de la herramienta de inversion Robinhood y muchas personas anonimas con vidas normales.Todos ellos, durante cuatro dias, libraron una batalla en torno a GameStop, una cadena de tiendas de videojuegos y electronica cuyas acciones se dispararon. Lo que empezo siendo una bromaonline, con emoticonos y memes, acabo poniendo en jaque al sistema y reportando beneficios millonarios a los participantes.Como si se tratara de unthriller,La red antisocial desvela algunas de las debilidades y oportunidades del sistema financiero, y relata la capacidad de unos cuantos individuos para subvertirlo. ¿El objetivo? Que, por una vez, David gane a Goliat y se lleve sus beneficios.

La historia novelada de la fundación de Facebook, la red social más popular del mundo, en la que las fiestas locas, el sexo con mujeres despampanantes, el talento de sus fundadores, el dinero de los inversores y la traicion entre amigos acaban conformando un relato muy poco habitual de la fundacion de una empresa, al tiempo que constituye una lectura compulsiva sobre la perdida de la inocencia de una generacion que ha hecho de las redes sociales su habitat natural.

A rollicking character driven narrative by bestselling author Ben Mezrich Breaking Twitter pulls back the curtain on the biggest business story of our time

Thad Roberts, un empleado de un prestigiosoprograma de la NASA, tuvo una idea romántica y descabellada. Quería regalarle la Luna a su novia.Thad convenció a su pareja y a otra cómplice femenina para irrumpir en uno de los inexpugnables laboratorios de la NASAatravesando multiples puestos de control, una puerta bloqueada electronicamente con codigos cifrados y largos pasillos vigilados por una hilera de camaras de seguridadpara que le ayudaran a robar rocas lunares, los minerales mas preciados del mundo.Pero ¿que pretendia sustrayendo unas piedras tan valiosas cuando su mera posesion es ilegal? ¿Era Thad Roberts, cuya extraordinaria inteligencia le habia llevado a ser seleccionado en uno de los programas cientificos mas competitivos, realmente lo que aparentaba?Ben Mezrich ha estudiado minuciosamente miles de paginas de expedientes judiciales, transcripciones del FBI y documentos de la NASA, y ha entrevistado a los principales protagonistas para reconstruir este robo al estilo Oceans Eleven, una disparatada historia de ingenio y amor que se disfruta como una trepidante pelicula de Hollywood.

A principios de 2021, un grupo poco coordinado de inversores privados y troles de internet, que intercambiaban mensajes sobre acciones y mercados en una página web, consiguió algo inesperado: tumbar uno de los hedge funds mas importantes de Wall Street. Fue el primer disparo de una revolucion que amenaza con acabar con el sistema financiero tal y como lo conocemos. Este libro vertiginoso y osado reconstruye la historia de ese acontecimiento inedito. Sus protagonistas son titanes de la inversion, millonarios como Elon Musk, los creadores de la herramienta de inversion Robinhood y muchas personas anonimas con vidas normales. Todos ellos, durante cuatro dias, libraron una batalla en torno a GameStop, una cadena de tiendas de videojuegos y electronica cuyas acciones se dispararon. Lo que empezo siendo una broma online, con emoticonos y memes, acabo poniendo en jaque al sistema y reportando beneficios millonarios a los participantes. Como si se tratara de un thriller, La red antisocial desvela algunas de las debilidades y oportunidades del sistema financiero, y relata la capacidad de unos cuantos individuos para subvertirlo. ¿El objetivo? Que, por una vez, David gane a Goliat y se lleve sus beneficios.

Los hermanos Tyler y Cameron Winklevoss son gemelos, estudiantes de Harvard, remeros olímpicos, perfectos representantes del establishment estadounidense y archienemigos de Mark Zuckerberg, quien consideran que les robo la idea de Facebook y a quien se enfrentaron en una epica batalla legal de la que salieron vencedores.Tras el juicio pensaron dedicarse al capital riesgo, nanciando y ayudando a crecer a startups, pero nadie quiso su dinero despues del enfrentamiento con el creador de Facebook. Mientras pensaban en que iban a invertir la indemnizacion que les habia tenido que pagar Zuckerberg, viajaron a Ibiza, donde se toparon por accidente con un personaje excentrico que les hablo de las criptomonedas. Como cuenta magistralmente este libro con una narracion endiablada y cargada de suspense, los Winklevoss pensaron que aquello podia ser o bien la siguiente maravilla tecnologica o bien un engaño colosal. Para solventar esa duda solo habia una opcion: hacer una apuesta.Ben Mezrich describe el apasionante mundo de las startups y el ambiente en ocasiones siniestro de las criptomonedas, y disecciona las venganzas, redenciones y el triunfo de estos dos personajes singulares, iluminando uno de los rincones mas atractivos del nuevo mundo tecnologico y economico.