How factual is the new Facebook book?

Ben Mezrich, author of the colorfully embellished (to put it mildly) book about an MIT blackjack ring that "took Vegas for millions," "Bringing Down the House," continues his run of commercial success. His forthcoming book, "The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal," due out next month, has already attracted the interest of Hollywood. Aaron Sorkin, creator of "The West Wing," has written a script and, according to Variety, Columbia Pictures is trying to recruit David Fincher, director of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," to direct. The picture is slated to be called "The Social Network."

Hollywood being Hollywood, it may not be surprising that no one there seems to be put off by Mezrich's history of producing non-fiction books that turn out, upon examination, to be non-non-fiction. Last year, Ideas staff writer Drake Bennett interviewed several of the MIT graduates upon whose exploits "Bringing Down the House" was supposedly based. They found much of Mezrich's version of their tale unrecognizable. The book "is not a work of 'nonfiction' in any meaningful sense of the word," Bennett concluded.

This week, Brad Stone, of the New York Times blog Bits, got hold of a galley copy of "The Accidental Billionaires," in which the early drama takes place not at MIT but at Harvard. He suggests that there's ample reason to be suspicious of the new book, too. First, there are serious holes in the reporting: "Mr. Mezrich appears to have had access to only one primary source in Facebook's complex founding story: Eduardo Saverin, one of the Harvard friends of Mark Zuckerberg." (Zuckerberg kicked Saverin out of the company, and Saverin sued Zuckerberg.) Stone also identifies some "possible fabrications," including a too-good-to-be-true scene in which Zuckerberg and his pals dine on koala on the yacht of one of the founders of Sun Microsystems.

Stone also reports that there's lots of probably-uncheckable dish about the decadent social life at Harvard.

He does find some evidence that criticism of Mezrich's reporting has registered with the author. Unlike in "Bringing Down the House," sentences like "We can picture what might have happened next …" dot the book, signaling concocted scenes.

Last year, presented with evidence that certain happenings in "Bringing Down the House" were essentially made-up, Mezrich responded: "I took literary license to make it readable." He also said, "The idea that the story is true is more important than being able to prove that it's true."

This time, in response to questions from Stone, a spokesman for Mezrich's publisher, Doubleday, said: "This is not reportage. It is big juicy fun."

Of course, it's non-reportage that's still being marketed as nonfiction.