Empire of Pain

The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

De: Patrick Radden Keefe

Narrado por: Patrick Radden Keefe

National Book Critics Circle Nominee

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

New York Times best seller

A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin. From the prize-winning and best-selling author of Say Nothing

The history of the Sackler dynasty is rife with drama—baroque personal lives; bitter disputes over estates; fistfights in boardrooms; glittering art collections; Machiavellian courtroom maneuvers; and the calculated use of money to burnish reputations and crush the less powerful. The Sackler name has adorned the walls of many storied institutions—Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to 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 a blockbuster painkiller that was the catalyst for the opioid crisis.

Empire of Pain begins with the story of three doctor brothers, Raymond, Mortimer, and the incalculably energetic Arthur, who weathered the poverty of the Great Depression and appalling anti-Semitism. Working at a barbaric mental institution, Arthur saw a better way and conducted groundbreaking research into drug treatments. He also had a genius for marketing, especially for pharmaceuticals, and bought a small ad firm.

Arthur devised the marketing for Valium, and built the first great Sackler fortune. He purchased a drug manufacturer, Purdue Frederick, which would be run by Raymond and Mortimer. The brothers began collecting art, and wives, and grand residences in exotic locales. Their children and grandchildren grew up in luxury.

Forty years later, Raymond’s son Richard ran the family-owned Purdue. The template Arthur Sackler created to sell Valium—co-opting doctors, influencing the FDA, downplaying the drug’s addictiveness—was employed to launch a far more potent product: OxyContin. The drug went on to generate some 35 billion dollars in revenue, and to launch a public health crisis in which hundreds of thousands would die.

This is the saga of three generations of a single family and the mark they would leave on the world, a tale that moves from the bustling streets of early 20th-century Brooklyn to the seaside palaces of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Cap d’Antibes to the corridors of power in Washington, DC. Empire of Pain chronicles the multiple investigations of the Sacklers and their company, and the scorched-earth legal tactics that the family has used to evade accountability.

Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, exhaustively documented and ferociously compelling. It is a portrait of the excesses of America’s second Gilded Age, a study of impunity among the super elite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed and indifference to human suffering that built one of the world’s great fortunes.

©2021 Patrick Radden Keefe (P)2021 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books of the Year • One of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of the Year • TIME Magazine 100 Must Read Books of 2021 • One the Best Books of the Year: NPR, Slate, EW, Boston Globe, Goodreads, The Guardian, Town & Country, BuzzFeed, LitHub, Vulture, and more

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and Finalist for the Baillie Gifford Winner of Winners Award

One of President Obama's Favorite Books of the Year

“An engrossing (and frequently enraging) tale of striving, secrecy and self-delusion….Keefe nimbly guides us through the thicket of family intrigues and betrayals… Even when detailing the most sordid episodes, Keefe’s narrative voice is calm and admirably restrained, allowing his prodigious reporting to speak for itself. His portrait of the family is all the more damning for its stark lucidity.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

“I read everything he writes. Every time he writes a book, I read it. Every time he writes an article, I read it … he’s a national treasure.”—Rachel Maddow, host of MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” and author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Blowout

“A true tragedy in multiple acts. It is the story of a family that lost its moorings and its morals… Written with novelistic family-dynasty and family-dynamic sweep, EMPIRE OF PAIN is a pharmaceutical FORSYTHE SAGA, a book that in its way is addictive, with a page-turning forward momentum.”—David M. Shribman, The Boston Globe

It will make your blood boil

Incredibly well researched and engaging to read. I highly recommend it to anyone who cares about seeing the Sacklers face their crimes. Truly despicable people who need to be fully exposed.

engrossing

We all need to know this story. Every family has been impacted in some way by the opioid crisis. To know the behind the scenes duplicity of the pill designers and marketers is disgusting and yet important.

Wonderful In-Depth Reporting

This is such a well researched and well written overview of the Sackler Family’s role in the opioid crisis. It is a peek behind the curtain of secrecy of the very powerful and greedy three generations of Sacklers. The irony and outrage, the heartache and heartlessness. Well done!

Great Insights on the Sackler Family

It’s clear after reading this book how the Sackler family for decades has used its power and influence to profit off drugs that lead to personal addiction. To them, money took precedence over morality. I thought the author did an extraordinary job by examining the family dynamics from the beginning to set the stage for what became to be the Sackler enterprise and Purdue Pharma.

Amazing

What a story. And read by the author, great job. This is a story everyone should know.

Tells the real story greed and evil

Loved this book and enjoyed listening to the story of pure greed and evil. The Sacklers should all have to take their own medicine and see how they fare on 80’s…

Astonishing

I could not put it down. And I could not believe what I was reading.

Well researched and well written expose

Horrific story detailing the family who owned Perdue pharmaceutical. The development and marketing of the narcotic pain reliever is disgusting

Excellent storyline

Exposes the truth behind big pharma and the corrupt people abusing the system.

Wow, an incredible walk through the history Oxy

a deep dive into the family behind the explosion of Oxy and addiction to it in the US. beautiful writing and well researched.