Ben Mezrich ( ; born February 7, 1969) is an American author. Early life and education Mezrich was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Molli Newman, a lawyer, and Reuben Mezrich, a chairman of radiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He has two brothers, including Josh Mezrich. He was raised in a Conservative Jewish household, and attended Princeton Day School, in Princeton, New Jersey. He graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Social Studies from Harvard University in 1991. Personal life Mezrich has been married to Tonya M. Chen since 2006. Some of his books have been written under the pen-name Holden Scott. Mezrich is known for his non-fiction books. He lives in Boston. 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. 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 categorized as non-fiction many of the characters in Bringing Down the House are composite 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. 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 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 which recounts 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