Patrick Radden Keefe

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About Patrick Radden Keefe
Patrick Radden Keefe is an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker and the bestselling author of five books, including Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, which received the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the FT Business Book of the Year, and Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award. His most recent book is Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks. The recipient of the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, he is also the creator and host of the 8-part podcast "Wind of Change," about the strange intersection of Cold War espionage and heavy metal music, which was named the #1 podcast of 2020 by Entertainment Weekly and the Guardian and has been downloaded more than 10 million times. He grew up in Boston and now lives in New York.
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Titles By Patrick Radden Keefe
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.
“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
“Patrick Radden Keefe is a brilliant writer, and each of these pieces reminds you that this world and the people in it are more interesting, complicated and moving than you had allowed yourself to imagine. ROGUES is a marvel, showcasing the work of a reporter at the absolute top of his game.” —Daniel Alarcón, author of The King is Always Above the People
Patrick Radden Keefe has garnered prizes ranging from the National Magazine Award to the Orwell Prize to the National Book Critics Circle Award for his meticulously-reported, hypnotically-engaging work on the many ways people behave badly. Rogues brings together a dozen of his most celebrated articles from The New Yorker. As Keefe says in his preface “They reflect on some of my abiding preoccupations: crime and corruption, secrets and lies, the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds, the bonds of family, the power of denial.”
Keefe brilliantly explores the intricacies of forging $150,000 vintage wines, examines whether a whistleblower who dared to expose money laundering at a Swiss bank is a hero or a fabulist, spends time in Vietnam with Anthony Bourdain, chronicles the quest to bring down a cheerful international black market arms merchant, and profiles a passionate death penalty attorney who represents the “worst of the worst,” among other bravura works of literary journalism.
The appearance of his byline in The New Yorker is always an event, and collected here for the first time readers can see his work forms an always enthralling but deeply human portrait of criminals and rascals, as well as those who stand up against them.
"Masked intruders dragged Jean McConville, a 38-year-old widow and mother of 10, from her Belfast home in 1972. In this meticulously reported book—as finely paced as a novel—Keefe uses McConville's murder as a prism to tell the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Interviewing people on both sides of the conflict, he transforms the tragic damage and waste of the era into a searing, utterly gripping saga." —New York Times Book Review
Jean McConville's abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.
Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders.
From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past--Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish.
Look for Patrick Radden Keefe's latest bestseller, Empire of Pain
“Reads like a mashup of The Godfather and Chinatown, complete with gun battles, a ruthless kingpin and a mountain of cash. Except that it’s all true.” —Time
Keefe reveals the inner workings of Sister Ping’s complex empire and recounts the decade-long FBI investigation that eventually brought her down. He follows an often incompetent and sometimes corrupt INS as it pursues desperate immigrants risking everything to come to America, and along the way, he paints a stunning portrait of a generation of illegal immigrants and the intricate underground economy that sustains and exploits them. Grand in scope yet propulsive in narrative force, The Snakehead is both a kaleidoscopic crime story and a brilliant exploration of the ironies of immigration in America.
In the late 1990s, when Keefe was a graduate student in England, he heard stories about an eavesdropping network led by the United States that spanned the planet. The system, known as Echelon, allowed America and its allies to intercept the private phone calls and e-mails of civilians and governments around the world. Taking the mystery of Echelon as his point of departure, Keefe explores the nature and context of communications interception, drawing together fascinating strands of history, fresh investigative reporting, and riveting, eye-opening anecdotes. The result is a bold and distinctive book, part detective story, part travel-writing, part essay on paranoia and secrecy in a digital age.
Chatter starts out at Menwith Hill, a secret eavesdropping station covered in mysterious, gargantuan golf balls, in England’s Yorkshire moors. From there, the narrative moves quickly to another American spy station hidden in the Australian outback; from the intelligence bureaucracy in Washington to the European Parliament in Brussels; from an abandoned National Security Agency base in the mountains of North Carolina to the remote Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.
As Keefe chases down the truth of contemporary surveillance by intelligence agencies, he unearths reams of little-known information and introduces us to a rogue’s gallery of unforgettable characters. We meet a former British eavesdropper who now listens in on the United States Air Force for sport; an intelligence translator who risked prison to reveal an American operation to spy on the United Nations Security Council; a former member of the Senate committee on intelligence who says that oversight is so bad, a lot of senators only sit on the committee for the travel.
Provocative, often funny, and alarming without being alarmist, Chatter is a journey through a bizarre and shadowy world with vast implications for our security as well as our privacy. It is also the debut of a major new voice in nonfiction.
Tras No digas nada, llega lo nuevo de Patrick Radden Keefe.
El retrato demoledor de una dinastía cuya fortuna se construyó gracias a Valium y cuya reputación fue destruida por OxyContin.
UNO DE LOS 50 MEJORES LIBROS DE 2021 SEGÚN BABELIA Y EL MUNDO, ASÍ COMO UNO DE LOS TOP TEN DEL AÑO SEGÚN ZENDA Y THE WASHINGTON POST
GANADOR DEL BAILLIE GIFFORD AWARD, EL MÁS PRESTIGIOSO PREMIO DE NO FICCIÓN DEL REINO UNIDO
El apellido Sackler adorna los muros de las instituciones más distinguidas: Harvard, el Metropolitan, Oxford, el Louvre... Es una de las familias más ricas del mundo, benefactora de las artes y las ciencias. El origen de su patrimonio siempre fue dudoso, hasta que salió a la luz que lo habían multiplicado gracias a OxyContin, un potente analgésico que catalizó la crisis de los opioides en Estados Unidos.
El imperio del dolor empieza en la Gran Depresión, con la historia de tres hermanos dedicados a la medicina: Raymond, Mortimer y el infatigable Arthur Sackler, dotado de una visión especial para la publicidad y el marketing. Años después, contribuyó a la primera fortuna familiar ideando la estrategia comercial de Valium, un revolucionario tranquilizante, para una gran farmacéutica.
Tras unas décadas fue Richard Sackler, el hijo de Raymond, quien pasó a dirigir los negocios del clan, incluida Purdue Pharma, su propia empresa fabricante de medicamentos. Basándose en las tácticas agresivas de su tío Arthur para vender el Valium, lanzó un fármaco que había de ser definitivo: OxyContin. Con él ganaron miles de millones de dólares, pero terminaría por arruinar su reputación.
Desde 2017, Patrick Radden Keefe hainvestigado los secretos de la dinastía Sackler: las complicadas relaciones familiares, los flujos de dinero, sus dudosas prácticas corporativas... El resultado es una bomba periodística que relata el auge y declive de una de las grandes familias americanas y su oscuro emporio de la salud.
La crítica ha dicho:
«Una trama compleja, escrita con alto contenido literario.»
Jaume Ripoll, cofundador y director editorial de Filmin, El País
«Este caballero es quizá el mejor periodista de hoy. Advertencia: en comparación con los Sackler, los Corleone se quedan en granujas de medio pelo.»
Eric González, Jot Down
«Una gran saga familiar que abarca varias generaciones, una historia de poder, envidias y egos que se lee como El Padrino y tiene ecos de Succession. [...] Una obra magna, que comienza como una palmada en la espalda del capitalismo y termina como una patada en el estómago de quien lo lea.»
Roberto Moro, Libros y Literatura
«Adrenalínico.»
Vanessa Graell, El Mundo
«Sensación de estar dentro de lo oculto. [...] Adictivo.»
Jordi Amat, Babelia
«Por Júpiter que la nueva obra de Patrick Radden Keefe es una buena investigación periodística.
UNA HISTORIA REAL DE CRIMEN Y MEMORIA EN IRLANDA DEL NORTE
Mejor libro del año 2019 según The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times y Time Magazine
UNO DE LOS MEJORES LIBROS DE 2020 SEGÚN EL MUNDO, EL PAÍS Y EL PERIÓDICO
«No está claro si es una novela o un ensayo, pero está bastante claro que No digas nada es un libro de terror. O una caja de nitroglicerina. O una bomba de relojería. [...] Se lee con congoja y con pavor, [...] una prosa trepidante y carnosa, a la altura de una intensidad que refleja la virulencia de una guerra 'in crescendo'.»
Rubén Amón, El Confidencial
«Leer o releer ahora el libro de Keefe es, pues, oportunísimo. [...] Te dejará como si te hubieran dado una paliza.»
Antoni Maria Piqué, El Nacional
GANADOR DEL NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD
GANADOR DEL PREMIO ORWELL
FINALISTA DEL NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
En diciembre de 1972, varios encapuchados secuestraron a Jean McConville, una viuda de treinta y ocho años con diez hijos a su cargo. Nadie dudó, en aquel barrio católico de Belfast, que se trataba de una represalia del IRA. Sin embargo, el crimen no empezó a resolverse hasta 2003, cinco años después de los acuerdos de paz del Viernes Santo, al ser desenterrados los restos mortales de McConville en una playa solitaria.
Cuando Patrick Radden Keefe se propuso investigar las ramificaciones de este caso, ignoraba que terminaría escribiendo una crónica total sobre el conflicto norirlandés que ha sido aclamada de manera unánime. Entrevistándose con decenas de testimonios, muchos de los cuales nunca antes habían dado su versión, retrata la profesionalización de las milicias republicanas, la represión del Estado británico, la escalada de violencia y, sobre todo, la evolución ideológica de algunos de sus protagonistas. Por ejemplo, la de Dolours Price, que se enroló en el IRA a temprana edad y estuvo implicada, entre otros atentados, en la ejecución de Jean McConville.
Enmarcado en la mejor tradición del periodismo narrativo y la no ficción literaria, No digas nada es un libro que aúna historia, política y biografía, y que sondea las dimensiones morales de un conflicto que, medio siglo después, todavía levanta ampollas.
Reseñas:
«Lo he leído con pasión y no sin un horror que en España también conocemos bastante bien. Sin duda, un gran libro.»
Javier Marías
«El mejor libro sobre Irlanda del Norte del que tengo conocimiento. Una tenebrosa obra maestra.»
John Banville
«Keefe ejerce el periodismo más incisivo y pone de manifiesto los terribles costes que tuvo el conflicto y cómo este sigue latiendo hoy en día. Una lectura obligatoria.»
Gillian Flynn
«Una crónica cruda, imparcial y absorbente, [...] un relato sobrecogedor y detallista que guarda el equilibrio perfecto entre ensayo y novela, al más puro estilo de Carrèrre o Gay Talese.
I Sackler sono una delle famiglie più ricche degli Stati Uniti. Per decenni il loro nome è stato associato a generose donazioni al mondo delle arti e delle scienze e ha a lungo adornato le pareti di prestigiose istituzioni americane e d'oltreoceano: dal Metropolitan Museum of Art di New York al Louvre di Parigi, dalla Scuola di medicina di Tel Aviv al Museo archeologico di Pechino. Proprietari di un impero farmaceutico, le origini del loro patrimonio miliardario risalgono agli anni Sessanta, quando il capostipite, Arthur, fece fortuna con la promozione di un nuovo e rivoluzionario farmaco contro l'ansia chiamato Valium. Inizia così - grazie a una combinazione di intraprendenza, interessi in campo medico e commerciale e una sensibilità spiccata per il marketing - l'inarrestabile ascesa di questa famiglia.
Quarant'anni più tardi, però, quella stessa intraprendenza e spregiudicatezza trascina la nuova generazione dei Sackler nello scandalo. Da un'inchiesta giornalistica emerge infatti il loro coinvolgimento in una delle più drammatiche crisi sanitarie del XX secolo: l'epidemia di oppioidi che ha portato all'assuefazione, e alla morte per overdose, migliaia di cittadini negli Stati Uniti. Il farmaco responsabile è l'OxyContin: un antidolorifico due volte più potente della morfina, capace di generare circa trentacinque miliardi di dollari di entrate e prodotto da Purdue Pharma, di proprietà dei Sackler.
Quella che Keefe racconta in queste pagine è una storia di ambizione, filantropia, crimine e impunità, corruzione, smania di potere e avidità. La storia di una famiglia, fra drammi ed eccentricità, aspre controversie societarie, inestimabili collezioni d'arte, manovre machiavelliche e un calcolato uso del denaro per rovinare reputazioni e schiacciare i meno potenti. Una storia che si sposta dalle strade trafficate della Brooklyn di inizio Novecento alle residenze sul mare di Cap d'Antibes, fino ai corridoi del potere a Washington.
L'impero del dolore è un capolavoro di narrativa e scrittura, ampiamente documentato e ferocemente avvincente. È il racconto dell'ascesa e della caduta di una dinastia, il ritratto degli eccessi della seconda età dell'oro americana, e al tempo stesso un atto di accusa contro l'avidità e l'indifferenza per la sofferenza umana alla base di una delle più grandi fortune al mondo.
Belfast, 1972. Jean McConville, vedova e madre di dieci figli, ha trentotto anni quando, in un tardo pomeriggio di dicembre, una ventina di membri dell'ala estremista dell'IRA irrompe in casa sua, alla periferia di Belfast, e la trascina via sotto gli occhi dei figli. I rapitori tentano di calmarli, chiamandoli per nome e promettendo che la madre sarà di ritorno in poche ore, invece Jean viene giustiziata con un colpo alla testa e fatta sparire. L'accusa? Essere una spia dei britannici. Il suo corpo viene ritrovato, per puro caso, trent'anni più tardi, nel 2003, sepolto in una spiaggia. Ancora appuntata sul vestito, la spilla da balia azzurra che Jean teneva sempre con sé. Di recente, alcune registrazioni, custodite nella biblioteca del campus del Boston College e secretate per anni, hanno riportato in primo piano quella vicenda, svelando particolari inediti.
L'omicidio McConville è soltanto una delle numerose pagine oscure del feroce conflitto che ha insanguinato l'Irlanda del Nord, noto come i Troubles. Ed è emblematico del clima di paura e omertà di quegli anni. Perché, come recita un verso del poeta irlandese Seamus Heaney, Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, «Qualunque cosa dici, non dire niente», l'omertà è stata uno dei punti dolenti di quelle tragiche vicissitudini e ha caratterizzato le due parti avverse persino molto tempo dopo la fine degli scontri e dei disordini.
Keefe parte da lì, per raccontare un pezzo di storia recente, una società devastata da una violenta guerriglia che per decenni ha trasformato l'Irlanda, e non solo, in uno spietato campo di battaglia.
Pluripremiato e acclamato da pubblico e critica, Non dire niente è un bellissimo esempio di giornalismo investigativo.
Immense succès critique, lauréat du prestigieux prix Orwell,Ne dis rienest une enquête journalistique d'une puissance inédite, une plongée au cœur de la violence politique, le portrait bouleversant d'une génération sacrifiée.
1972, Belfast, quartier catholique. Par une sombre nuit de décembre, une mère de famille est enlevée sous les yeux de ses dix enfants. Ils ne la reverront jamais...
Pourquoi une femme apparemment sans histoires s'est-elle retrouvée la cible de l'IRA ? Était-elle réellement une moucharde ? Et pourquoi, alors que tout le monde connaissait l'identité des agresseurs, personne n'a rien dit ?
En s'intéressant à l'" affaire Jean McConville ", Patrick Radden Keefe, journaliste auNew Yorker, revisite toute l'histoire du conflit nord-irlandais. Des manifestations du début des années 1960 jusqu'à la vague d'attentats qui a terrorisé tout le Royaume-Uni, en passant par les grèves de la faim de Bobby Sands et desBlanket men, il en révèle les derniers secrets, les zones d'ombre et, surtout, le prix à payer pour les individus.
Aquest llibre sobre el conflicte nord-irlandès i les seves repercussions utilitza el cas McConville com a punt de partida per mostrar una societat devastada. La violència brutal no només va deixar marca en persones com els fills de McConville, sinó també en membres de l'IRA ressentits per una pau que estava lluny d'aconseguir una Irlanda unida, i els va obligar a plantejar-se si les morts que havien provocat no eren sinó mers assassinats.
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"El millor llibre sobre Irlanda del Nord que he llegit mai"
John Banville
La santé publique est trop importante pour être laissée aux trusts pharmaceutiques.
La « crise des opioïdes » frappe les États-Unis avec violence : 70 500 décès par overdose en 2017, des milliers de familles en détresse, les services sociaux et de secours débordés...
Cette situation est née dans les cabinets médicaux à la fin des années 1990. Prétendant que son antidouleur OxyContin n'était pas addictif, l’entreprise Purdue Pharma a créé de toutes pièces une crise sanitaire majeure. Mais les profits sont à la hauteur. La famille Sackler, propriétaire de l'entreprise, est devenue la seizième famille la plus riche du pays, et se construit une image de marque en finançant des universités et des musées, comme le Louvre à Paris.
Patrick Radden Keefe a produit la première enquête sur le rôle de la famille Sackler dans l'irruption de la crise des opioïdes aux Etats-Unis. Une enquête de référence qui se lit comme un roman noir, très noir.