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The shocking story of three generations of the Sackler family and their roles in the stories of Valium, OxyContin and the opioid crisis. The inspiration behind the Netflix series Painkiller, starring Uzo Aduba and Matthew Broderick.
Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
The Sunday Times Bestseller
A BBC Radio 4 'Book of the Week'
Shortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of the Year
Shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction
'I gobbled up Empire of Pain . . . a masterclass in compelling narrative nonfiction.' - Elizabeth Day, The Guardian '30 Best Summer Reads'
The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions like Harvard and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations in the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing Oxycontin. A blockbuster painkiller that was a catalyst for the opioid crisis - an international epidemic of drug addiction which has killed nearly half a million people.
In this masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, award-winning journalist and author of Say Nothng, Patrick Radden Keefe, exhaustively documents the jaw-dropping reality. Empire of Pain is the story of a dynasty, and twenty-first-century greed.
'There are so many "they did what?" moments in this book, when your jaw practically hits the page' - Sunday Times
'You feel almost guilty for enjoying it so much' - The Times
About the author
Patrick Radden Keefe is an award-winning staff writer at the
New Yorker and the author of
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction),
Say Nothing: Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, as well as the critically-acclaimed books,
The Snakehead, and
Chatter. He is the writer and host of the eight-part podcast
Wind of Change on the origins of the Scorpions' power ballad. He is the recipient of the 2014 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Reporting in 2015 and 2016, and also received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He grew up in Boston and now lives in New York.
Summary
The shocking story of three generations of the Sackler family and their roles in the stories of Valium, OxyContin and the opioid crisis. The inspiration behind the Netflix series Painkiller, starring Uzo Aduba and Matthew Broderick.
Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
The Sunday Times Bestseller
A BBC Radio 4 'Book of the Week'
Shortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of the Year
Shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction
'I gobbled up Empire of Pain . . . a masterclass in compelling narrative nonfiction.' – Elizabeth Day, The Guardian '30 Best Summer Reads'
The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions like Harvard and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations in the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing Oxycontin. A blockbuster painkiller that was a catalyst for the opioid crisis – an international epidemic of drug addiction which has killed nearly half a million people.
In this masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, award-winning journalist and author of Say Nothng, Patrick Radden Keefe, exhaustively documents the jaw-dropping reality. Empire of Pain is the story of a dynasty, and twenty-first-century greed.
'There are so many "they did what?" moments in this book, when your jaw practically hits the page' – Sunday Times
‘You feel almost guilty for enjoying it so much’ – The Times
Foreword
The story of the Sackler dynasty, their company Purdue Pharma, its bestselling drug OxyContin, their immensely generous philanthropy and their involvement in the opioid crisis that has created millions of addicts, even as it generated billions of dollars in profit.
Additional text
Keefe has a way of making the inaccessible incredibly digestible, of morphing complex stories into page-turning thrillers, and he's done it again with Empire of Pain . . . A scathing — but meticulously reported — takedown of the extended family behind OxyContin. It's equal parts juicy society gossip and historical record of how they built their dynasty and eventually pushed Oxy onto the market.
Report
There are so many "they did what?" moments in this book, when your jaw practically hits the page Sunday Times
