The complete history of Zynga (so far) in handy e-book form

To mark Zynga‘s stock-market debut, we’re releasing a 63-page e-book on the history of the company.

In just five years, social-gaming company Zynga has gone from scrappy, sometimes-shady underdog, to multi-billion dollar company. On Friday, Zynga capped of the first leg of its journey and started another when it went public on the Nasdaq.

VentureBeat’s lead games writer Dean Takahashi has followed the company from its beginnings as Presidio Media in 2007, through lawsuits, hit games, failures and internal drama. This tale was originally published on VentureBeat as a 12 page article. If you’d like a more mobile-friendly version, the $2.99 Amazon e-book is available now. Read it on your Kindle, or any mobile device with a Kindle app.

This book’s narrative is based on extensive interviews and research conducted by Dean since 2008. The story of Zynga is very much about its founder, Mark Pincus. But it’s also about the whole cast of characters who surrounded him, the rivals who drove him to succeed, and the industry that challenged Zynga to prove itself over and over.

In this book, we’ve done our best to triangulate on how Zynga became what it is today — and how it almost didn’t happen.

If you’re a game-history buff, check out Dean’s last book, “Xbox: Making of a Bad-Ass Machine” on Amazon and in Apple’s iBookstore.