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Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by [Patrick Radden Keefe]

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Patrick Radden Keefe

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty Kindle Edition

by Patrick Radden Keefe (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

6,766 ratings

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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 bestselling author of SayNothing

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 thirty-five 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 twentieth-century Brooklyn to the seaside palaces of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Cap d’Antibes to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. 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.

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558 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Doubleday
Publication date

April 13, 2021
File size

8616 KB
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From the Publisher

Review

New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books of the Year •One of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of 2021 • 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 •One of President Obama's Favorite Books of the Year

“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

“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

“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

“A brutal, multigenerational treatment of the Sackler family… Keefe deepens the narrative by tracing the family's ambitions and ruthless methods back to the founding patriarch, Arthur Sackler…His life might be a model for the American dream, if it hadn't arguably laid the foundations for a still-unfolding national tragedy.” - Brian Mann, NPR.org

“The opioid epidemic has killed nearly half a million Americans over the past two decades. Many of their loved ones, along with public health advocates and experts, believe that one very rich, very famous family has never fully faced the consequences for its role in those deaths. EMPIRE OF PAIN, the explosive new book by journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, is an attempt to change that — to hold the family accountable in a way that nobody has quite done before, by telling its story as the saga of a dynasty driven by arrogance, avarice and indifference to mass suffering…. Keefe marshals a large pile of evidence and deploys it with prosecutorial precision. Keefe is a gifted storyteller who excels at capturing personalities.” - Jonathan Cohn, The Washington Post

"Empire of Pain reads like a real-life thriller, a page-turner, a deeply shocking dissection of avarice and calculated callousness… It is the measure of great and fearless investigative writing that it achieves retribution where the law could not….Exhaustively researched and written with grace and gravity, Empire of Pain unpeels a most terrible American scandal. You feel almost guilty for enjoying it so much." - The Times (London)

"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, widely believed to be at the root cause of our nation's opioid crisis. It's equal parts juicy society gossip and historical record of how they built their dynasty and eventually pushed Oxy onto the market.” - Seija Rankin,Entertainment Weekly

“An air-tight indictment of the family behind the opioid crisis….[an] impressive exposé.” - Harriet Ryan, The Los Angeles Times

“A damning portrait of the Sacklers, the billionaire clan behind the OxyContin epidemic. If you are someone who engages in this kind of sneaky conduct, the last person you want reporting on you is Keefe….[He] has a knack for crafting lucid, readable descriptions of the sort of arcane business arrangements the Sacklers favored. He is also indefatigable….The Sackler infighting described in Empire of Pain will surely prompt many comparisons to the HBO series Succession.”- Laura Miller, Slate

"One of the Ten Best Books of 2021"
– Laura Miller, Slate

“Put simply, this book will make your blood boil….a devastating portrait of a family consumed by greed and unwilling to take the slightest responsibility or show the least sympathy for what it wrought….a highly readable and disturbing narrative.” - John Carreyrou,The New York Times Book Review (cover)

“A shocking saga… [a]tour-de-force account… [Keefe] brings to life the obsessive personalities and ferocious energy of some members…The Sacklers emerge as a shameless bunch, but Empire of Pain also poses troubling questions about the US healthcare system that permitted them to flourish.” - John Gapper, The Financial Times

“Rigorously reported and brilliantly executed Empire of Pain hones in on the family whose company developed, unleashed, and pushed the drug on Americans, pulling in billions of dollars for themselves in the process….This is an important, necessary book.” - Hillary Kelly, New York magazine

"Indefatigable investigative journalist Keefe crafts a page-turning corporate biography and jaw-dropping condemnation of the Sacklers’ amoral disregard for anything save the acquisition of power, privilege, and influence. In Keefe’s expert hands, the Sackler family saga becomes an enraging exposé of what happens when utter devotion to the accumulation of wealth is paired with an unscrupulous disregard for human health." - Carol Haggas, Booklist

“An engrossing and deeply reported book about the Sackler family, the owners of Purdue Pharma. Their company created Oxycontin, the opioid introduced in the mid-90s that sent a wave of addiction and death across the country. Unlike previous books on the epidemic, Empire of Pain is focused on the wildly rich, ambitious and cutthroat family that built its empire first on medical advertising and later on painkillers. In his hands, their story becomes a great American morality tale about unvarnished greed dressed in ostentatious philanthropy.” - Time Magazine, The Best Books of 2021 So Far

Amazon.com Review

Editors' pick: The true story of the Sackler family and OxyContin is Game of Thrones-level stuff, and it’s fascinating."—Chris Schluep, Amazon Editor --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08ND91K6G
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Doubleday (April 13, 2021)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 13, 2021
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 8616 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 558 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #2,936 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
6,766 ratings

About the author

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Patrick Radden Keefe

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Patrick Radden Keefe is an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and the author of Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, as well as two previous critically acclaimed books, The Snakehead, and Chatter. 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.

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2 star		1%
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Top reviews from the United States

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DixieD

Up till 3 a.m.

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2021

Verified Purchase

I knew the general outlines of the story, but the book still kept me up till three a.m. reading it! Opioids, and their marketing, were the slipperiest of slopes and the nation skidded down the hill.

As a doc, I knew of the overprescribing in the late 1990's and wondered how a "controlled substance" could make it from the factory to the streets with such ease. Now I know. At least I never wrote a script for it and never took a single dose of this poison.

Evil. Pure, homegrown, evil. Aided and abetted by lawyers, and even McKinsey. NO ONE bothered to say what everyone knew: there was no excuse for the flood of opioids. No excuse except the addiction to money.

265 people found this helpful

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Michele Bair

Devastating

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2021

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This is the story of 4 generations of one American family, the Sacklers, it's not meant to document the Opiod Epidemic that has cost our country 500 thousand lives and 2 trillion dollars, as such it reads like a novel in some places, especially the opening chapter, and a morality play througout.

Though I am grateful to Keefe for writing this book and attempting to hold this "pure evil" family to account I am devastated that they clearly seem to have gotten away with it all. Sackler Family sold 40 billion dollars worth of highly addictive poison, cleared about 12 billion of that in cash, funneled billions offshore stripping Purdue Pharma of most of its meaningful assets, then declared bankruptcy leaving less than a billion or so to cover damages from Maine to California.

I share the author's hope that this book will inspire others to read the archive and tell this story someday. We can't bring back the lives of so many who were so cruelly taken. We can't hold those to account who profited so cruelly from the lies they told us so expertly. But we can still tell this story in the hope that the next Sackler family won't be able to get away with all of it - next time. And we need to tell this story for the half a million Americans who seemed to have paid for the Sackler Family Trust Funds with their lives.

151 people found this helpful

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Shadysix78

Unbelievable, great read, highly recommended.

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2021

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This book gives a glimpse into the underworld of the pharmaceutical industry. But more than that I believe it truly explains how the world really works. Its focus is the Sackler family and the shady dealings of Big Pharma. But if you step back and look at the big picture it explains how these billionaires run everything. Anything that needs big money backing. Politics and politicians are bought and paid for just like this book lays out. Hell these companies write their own laws for Christ sakes. Great read that gives you a rare glimpse into how the World not just the pharmaceutical world truly operates. Just read this book fantastic journalism that is rare these days.

105 people found this helpful

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You MUST buy this book

Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2021

Verified Purchase

I have been eagerly waiting for Mr. Radden Keefe's book the moment I finished his last novel, Say Nothing. If I could give this book and all of his books ten stars I would. The Washington Post said it best in their recent book review: "Keefe is a gifted storyteller who excels at capturing personalities, which is no small thing given that the Sacklers didn’t provide access." He is a beautiful story teller and in every page you feel as if you are in the room living the moments he is recreating. You will not be disappointed by this book (or any of his books). He is a brilliant and talented writer and devoured this book the moment it was delivered. You will not be disappointed in reading anything Mr. Radden Keefe writes! His books are simply outstanding.

86 people found this helpful

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Meesha

Wasn't the hard hitting piece I was hoping for

Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2021

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The 1st half of this book was a page turner. I loved the history of the 3 brothers. The struggles, the effort, the clever manipulation. What clearly laid the groundwork for the next generations to create an opioid crisis in the US. This was well done. The back half of the book lost all of the sizzle. I was bored. I also couldn't quite connect the comparison of gun manufacturers being just like the Sacklers, since drug addiction and the pending death that often accompany it are A) Not a constitutional right and B) Guns are not addictive nor do they guarantee death. The two instances where the book tied to draw this correlation created a total lack of journalistic credibility for me. Perhaps that's why I lost interest. I'd recommend this book regardless, for decent education purposes. But I wouldn't recommend wasting a weekend cover to cover on this.

60 people found this helpful

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Leah Dickstein

An incredible read—thorough and informative

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2021

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Yes it will make your blood boil and yes it’s still worth reading. I’ll definitely be looking into PAIN after this.

44 people found this helpful

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An eloquently sardonic "hit job" on 3 generations of a family.

Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2021

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This book starts as a masterpiece of penmanship and detail. It builds up the rise of the Sadler family, their philanthropy, artistic contributions and their human frailties. However as the author starts dealing with Oxycontin he assumes a prosecutorial posture hounding the family as villains. My objection is how one sided he is within the context of the empire of pain. He shows little empathy for the dilemma of the pain that patients suffer and more importantly the conflicts of the prescribing doctors. However, my primary objection is the way he frames the problem as if the Sadler family is the perpetual villain of the situation. He does not deal in a balanced way that in this "empire of pain" given that a number of other pharmaceutical companies are also as deeply involved. That the producers of the opiates in Australia are given a brief mention only towards the end of the book is unforgivable. The fact that they have intensified the potency of the opiates and made it more lethal is disgusting. With all the research this author had done we get no idea of the relative magnitude of the number of deaths from clinical overdose, abuse or other psychological problems such as suicide. The question is how complicit are the opium producers and if the author in his fervor should have covered their contribution in this sad "empire of pain".

29 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Fang

Speechless

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 6, 2021

Verified Purchase

Best book I have read for ages, not much to add to the five stars reviews here. Investigative journalism and stylish writing of the highest order.

23 people found this helpful

Mrs. Shirley J. Stern

Exhaustive expose of the Sackler Empire

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 14, 2021

Verified Purchase

I first read “Chatter” several years ago so when I came across “Say Nothing” I was keen to read more by this author. Several other reads later I searched to find the author again. Having read about the opioid epidemic and the Sackler family in the news, I was pleased to find this book. Once again I was impressed not only with the writing but with the thoroughness of the research!

18 people found this helpful

Yorkshire Rog

Great detail on a scandal

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 29, 2021

Verified Purchase

This was a fascinating read on a subject
I had looked at in a minor way before.
This book is super detailed about the Oxy-Contin/Opioid scandal in the USA and beyond. Clever marketing by the Sackler family made them billions in a comparitively short time, whilst killing more 'pain sufferers' than all post WW11
casualties..

15 people found this helpful

Kindle Customer

Speechless

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 3, 2021

Verified Purchase

The history of this family and their disregard for anyone but themselves left me speechless

15 people found this helpful

S Riaz

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 17, 2022

Verified Purchase

Having previously read, "Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern ireland," by Patrick Radden Keefe, and having seen that this title, "Empire of Pain," had won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction (my favourite book award), this was a must-read for me.

I had read, and seen, various news stories on the opiod crisis in the US, but I knew very little of the Sackler family. This book combines the story of the the opiod crisis, the history of pain management, the mass marketing of opiods and a family history of the Sackler family. However, Patrick Radden Keefe is an excellent writer and so do not be put off by thinking this will be overly complicated or rely too much on medical jargon. The author makes this easy to understand, without dumbing down his writing, and tells a fascinating story of the three generations of the Sackler family, through ambition, philanthropy, and huge wealth, into greed, shame, seemingly endless litigation and blaming the family personally and naming them in Court.

Although I found the entire book gripping, I must admit that I was most fascinated by the first generation, that of three brothers, Arthur, Montgomery and Raymond Sackler. Arthur's ambition, his desire for wealth and respectability, his drive for success, no matter what the cost, was a portrait of utter greed and naked ambition. The shameless marketing of drugs, with no thought of the cost to users, the later blaming of patients for becoming addicted was utterly shocking. The author compares this blaming of those addicted to drugs by the company, by those who insist that individuals should be able to own guns. It is not the gun who kills people, it is people who kill people. It is not the painkiller that kills people, it is people misusing the drug that kills people. Perhaps, anyone reading this, will be inspired to now tackle the horrific amount of gun crime in the US and realise that this spurious argument is nothing less than a lie in both cases.

7 people found this helpful

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