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.
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
'There are so many "they did what?" moments in this book, when your jaw practically hits the page' - Sunday Times
'A page-turner with a villainous family to rival the Roys in Succession' - Esquire
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 Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe, exhaustively documents the jaw-dropping reality. Empire of Pain is the story of a dynasty, and twenty-first-century greed.
'This book will make your blood boil' - John Carreyrou, author of Bad Blood
'I gobbled up Empire of Pain . . . a masterclass in compelling narrative nonfiction.' - Elizabeth Day, The Guardian
'You feel almost guilty for enjoying it so much' - The Times
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.
