Empire of Pain | Patrick Radden Keefe

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty | Patrick Radden Keefe

How did a respected philanthropic dynasty build an empire on the devastation of the opioid crisis? Patrick Radden Keefe investigates in Empire of Pain.

About the Book:

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 drugs 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 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 Americas 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.

Frequently Asked Questions About Empire of Pain:

Q: Is this book an abstract academic study on corporate regulation or a narrative story?
A: It functions as a highly dramatic, fast-paced family saga. Reviewers frequently compare it to a real-life version of the HBO series Succession because it traces three generations of intense boardroom fights, personal eccentricities, multi-million-dollar art collections, and fierce legal battles over family assets.

Q: Does the book only cover the contemporary opioid epidemic or does it go further back?
A: The narrative spans nearly a century. It starts during the Great Depression with the patriarch Arthur Sackler and his brilliant, early medical advertising strategies that built a massive fortune selling Valium. It then moves forward to trace how his descendants used those exact marketing methods to build Purdue Pharma and launch OxyContin.

Q: What specific corporate tactics and strategies are exposed in the text?
A: Author Patrick Radden Keefe documents how the family and their firm aggressively drove sales by co-opting prominent physicians, heavily lobbying the FDA, utilizing misleading safety marketing data, and downplaying the drug's addictive qualities while hiding behind elite philanthropic donations to protect their public names.

Q: How reliable and well-researched is the journalism inside this book?
A: The research is world-class and definitive. Patrick Radden Keefe is an acclaimed staff writer for The New Yorker. He constructed the book out of hundreds of exclusive interviews, leaked internal company emails, secret boardroom transcripts, and deep-level legal depositions obtained after years of investigative reporting.

Q: Does the book outline the legal outcomes and investigations faced by the family?
A: Yes. The final chapters deliver a thorough, high-stakes chronicle of the massive multi-state investigations, congressional hearings, high-profile lawsuits, and the complex "scorched-earth" legal maneuvers the family deployed to preserve their wealth and avoid personal liability.

About the Author:

Patrick Radden Keefe: American Writer

Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker, an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of The Snakehead and Chatter. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Slate, New York, and The New York Review of Books, among others and he is a frequent commentator on NPR, the BBC, and MSNBC.

Patrick received the 2014 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, for his story "A Loaded Gun," was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Reporting in 2015 and 2016, and is also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Bibliographic Data:

• Full Title: Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
• Author(s): Patrick Radden Keefe
• Publisher & Imprint: Vintage Books (An imprint of Knopf Doubleday / Penguin Random House)
• Publication Date: October 18, 2022 (Original hardcover published April 2021)
• Book Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Pre-Owned / Very Good
• Edition: Reprint / Trade Paperback Edition
• Pages: 640
• Language: English / en-us
• ISBN-13: 9781984899019
• ISBN-10: 1984899015
• Library of Congress (LCCN): 2020055412
• Primary Genre (BISAC): BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Rich & Famous
• Sub-Genres (BISAC): BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Industries / Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology; TRUE CRIME / White Collar Crime; HISTORY / United States / 21st Century
• Dimensions: 5.1 x 1.11 x 7.95 inches
• Weight: 13.5 oz (approx. 0.84 lbs)

Pharmaceutical greed, corporate corruption, and the tragic roots of the opioid epidemic. Patrick Radden Keefe exposes the Sackler dynasty in Empire of Pain.

Explore the shocking corporate history and hidden tragedy behind the Sackler family empire. Tap to discover Patrick Radden Keefe's book Empire of Pain!