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.

«John Malcolm is barely 30, a high school football hero and Princeton graduate, he controls a hedge fund worth $50m. He made his millions back in the early '90's, a time when dozens of elite young American graduates made their fortunes in hedge funds in the Far East, beating the Japanese at their own game, riding the crashing waves of the Asian markets and winning. Failure meant not only bankruptcy and disgrace a la Nick Leeson, but potentially even death — at the hands of the Japanese Yakuza. «Ugly Americans» tells Malcolm's story, and that of others like him, in a cross between Mezrich's own best-selling «Bringing Down the House» and Michael Lewis' «Liar's Poker».»