Far be it from money-and-technology-obsessed Silicon Valley types to fixate on the fleshy trappings of wealth; they want to know the nitty-gritty details of how a market-leading social network was born. And indeed, both Boston magazine and the New York Times, which obtained galleys of the book, note that Accidental Billionaires doesn't tell the reader much about how the site was actually assembled; instead, lustier details — well, purported details — win out.

Luke O'Brien recapped one scene for Boston:

Zuckerberg himself remains distant, a robot in a fleece. How strange, then, to see this cipher getting freaky with a coed in a bathroom. Rendering Zuckerberg and [co-founder Eduardo] Saverin as campus studs, Mezrich shows them turning out groupies in adjacent stalls.

Zuckerberg is also shown being picked up by a Victoria Secret model at a party in San Francisco (a change from the book proposal we obtained last year, which had co-founder Eduardo Saverin with the model). The pair leave together. As both the Boston and the Times note, the scene is hard to swallow; Facebook had launched just months prior. Dweeby Zuckerberg already had groupies? O'Brien, who has himself dug into Facebook's past, wrote that Zuckerberg has "been dating the same girl since the site's early days" and that there's no evidence Facebook was created so Zuckerberg could score with women.

Even Mezrich doesn't sound too confident in the hook-up scenes. From Boston:

"I just told the story that I was told by multiple sources," Mezrich explains now. "More power to Mark if that's what really happened. ...I have a feeling that Mark Zuckerberg right now could date anybody he wants to. ...Mark has done some amazing things, and if having sex with a Victoria's Secret model is one of the things that he doesn't like to read about himself, I would be surprised."

In other words, Zuckerberg should accept the tales because they're flattering. That was the stance the subjects of Mazerich's Burning Down the House seemed to take when it emerged much of that book — also turned into a movie — was fabricated. But, unlike those obscure college card sharks, Zuckerberg's ambitions extend far beyond silver screen notoriety, and the Facebook CEO is more likely to make a fuss. Indeed, his flacks have already declared that Mezrich's unreleased book sounds inaccurate. Somehow we doubt they'll leave it at that.

[Boston, Times]

The evidence that the two have ended their feud, which began when they were both students at Harvard and Facebook was just getting off the ground: Saverin is now listed as a company founder on Facebook's website.

There's an excellent reason for Zuckerberg to make nice with Saverin, though: Ben Mezrich, author of Bringing Down the House, is writing an account of the founding of Facebook which relies heavily on Saverin as a source. Aaron Sorkin, the West Wing creator, is already planning to adapt the book, which doesn't have a publication date yet, into a movie.

If Saverin has made up with Zuckerberg, he may not be as willing to cooperate with Mezrich. One hopes the author got his interviews done before Saverin's name went back up on Facebook. A book proposal leaked to Gawker last year has some factual errors — Zuckerberg and Saverin dined on the yacht of then-Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, who says he has never owned a boat. But even if it gets close to the truth of Facebook's origins, it will be embarrassing, since it claims that Zuckerberg and Saverin set up the website to meet girls. The feud between the founders was central to the plot.

It has been almost five years since Zuckerberg has acknowledged Saverin as having anything to do with the company, which Saverin incorporated and managed for Zuckerberg from their college dorm. According to Rolling Stone, Zuckerberg reincorporated the company and squeezed Saverin out after he accused Zuckerberg of spending company money on personal expenses:

In July, Zuckerberg and Saverin had a mysterious falling out. Zuckerberg has filed a lawsuit, claiming Saverin jeopardized the company by freezing Facebook's bank accounts. Saverin countersued, claiming that Zuckerberg never matched his $20,000 in seed money and, further, used that money for personal expenses. That summer, Zuckerberg transferred all intellectual-property rights and membership interests to a new version of the company in Delaware.

Saverin reportedly told Cameron Winklevoss, another student embroiled in a legal dispute with Zuckerberg, that Zuckerberg had "screwed him, too." Zuckerberg moved the company to Palo Alto, Calif., and raised hundreds of millions of dollars, making the company worth a notional $15 billion on paper. Saverin saw none of that.

With hard feelings seemingly over (possibly smoothed over by some cash or stock), Facebook flack Brandee Barker explains Saverin's official co-founder status this way:

We made the change recently to make sure Eduardo gets the credit and visibility he deserves for his contribution to Facebook.

That's quite a change from Facebook's official stance in 2007, when Barker herself denied on the record that Saverin cofounded Facebook, even though he was listed in the company's documents of incorporation.

Since the lawsuit centers around who did what for Facebook when, it seems absurd to think that Zuckerberg would publicly acknowledge Saverin with a lawsuit hanging over his head. Barker repeatedly refused to answer any questions about the status of the lawsuit. Saverin and his lawyers did not return inquiries. Now, with an ending that seems to have zipped Saverin's lips, will Sorkin and Mezrich have any story to tell?

Click to expand the images.

Earlier this week, CNBC asked me to come on the air to discuss Facebook's legal woes. I've spent days immersed in legal filings, and the clip, above, just scratches the surface of what I've learned. Next week comes a critical moment for Facebook, the red-hot social network that has captured Silicon Valley's imagination, and its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. After the jump, I explain why Zuckerberg will face a moment of reckoning next Wednesday, July 25, and detail a timeline of Facebook's legal battles.

In November 2003, as a student at Harvard University, Zuckerberg fell in with three classmates who were working on a new idea: ConnectU, a set of interlinked social networks for people at a single college. Zuckerberg did some work for them, but then launched his own website — what's now known as Facebook. The result: A lawsuit that just won't end. Next Wednesday, in a Boston courtroom, Zuckerberg's lawyers have their best shot at making it go away for good, at a hearing on a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

Legal experts say that Zuckerberg's best shot is to get the suit dismissed on a technicality, by making a claim that the statute of limitations ran out on his opponents' charges on February 4, 2007, three years after Zuckerberg first launched Facebook.

That's a tough one, but more likely than the alternative, which is getting it dismissed on the substance of the case. One lawyer described ConnectU's charges as "squishy," which sounds bad — but in a hearing on a motion to dismiss, squishy is actually a good thing. If there's any doubt on whether a claim is valid, in such a hearing, the judge's inclination will be to let it go forward to trial. And a trial, with all its uncertainty, is the last thing Zuckerberg needs, with his stated plans to keep Facebook independent and apparent goal to pursue an IPO.

It all comes down to timing, then. With that, here's how Zuckerberg got into this legal spot. Anything missing? Let me know in the comments, and I'll update it.

December 2002: Harvard students Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra conceive of a college social network and hire Sanjay Mavinkurve to work on what later becomes ConnectU

May 2003: Mavinkurve graduates from Harvard, with the site still unfinished; Victor Gao, another Harvard student, later picks up work on the site

November 2003: After Gao leaves the project, ConnectU's founders hire Mark Zuckerberg to work on Harvard Connection, a website that later became ConnectU

January 11, 2004: While still promising to finish Harvard Connection, Zuckerberg registers the domain for thefacebook.com, a fact that the ConnectU founders allege that didn't disclose in a meeting three days later

February 4, 2004: Zuckerberg launches thefacebook.com

April 2004: Facebook expands to other colleges

April 13, 2004: Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskowitz, and Eduardo Saverin form Thefacebook.com LLC, a partnership (despite this, Saverin is not credited today as a founder by the company)

Spring 2004: ConnectU hires a Web-development firm, iMarc

May 2004: Cameron Winklevoss allegedly emails his father detailing a plan to steal email addresses from Facebook's website

May 2004: Having appealed to Harvard administrators, without success, to rule that Zuckerberg violated the school's honor code, ConnectU's founders appeal to Harvard president Larry Summers, who also rebuffs them

May 21, 2004: ConnectU launches its first website, Harvard Connection

June 11, 2004: ConnectU's founders allegedly ask iMarc to write a script that automatically logs into the Facebook website and harvests users' email addresses; iMarc refuses

July 22, 2004: ConnectU's founders allegedly send thousands of emails to Facebook users inviting them to join ConnectU

September 2, 2004: ConnectU files a lawsuit against Zuckerberg and other Facebook founders

February 2005: Facebook blocks ConnectU's alleged continued attempts to harvest emails from its website

May 26, 2005: Accel Partners invests $13 million in Facebook

August 23, 2005: Facebook, at bad-boy entrepreneur Sean Parker's instigation, buys the facebook.com domain name for $200,000

October 14, 2005: Facebook's founders file a motion to dismiss ConnectU's lawsuit

September 11, 2006: Facebook allows any user with an email address to join the site, and its user base begins to grow explosively

March 9, 2007: Facebook files a countersuit against ConnectU, charging it, among other things, with violating antispam laws

March 28, 2007: A court dismisses ConnectU's original lawsuit, without prejudice, allowing ConnectU to immediately file a new lawsuit against Facebook's founders as well as the company itself

June 23, 2007: Court grants a hearing on a motion to dismiss ConnectU's lawsuit against Facebook, scheduled for July 25