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Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

by Patrick Radden Keefe

Doubleday ·2021 ·535 pages
Best of 2021 Top 25 Overall
Top of the Pile
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94/99
Top of the Pile

92/99

Critics' Rating Index

Top of the Pile

93/99

Readers' Rating Index

Top of the Pile

97/99

Scholars' Citation Index

96/99

Volume of Reviews

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About This Book

The highly anticipated portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, by the prize-winning, bestselling author of Say Nothing .The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied 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 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.Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, exhaustively documented and ferociously compelling.


Reviews

"Readers will be outraged and enthralled in equal measure."

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"That is a shame because Keefe is such a talented researcher and storyteller, and a sustained portrait of one of the multitude of families ruined by the Sacklers' drug would have presented their callousness in even starker relief."

Harriet Ryan· Los Angeles Times Read review ↗ Near the Top

"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 Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"But by talking to more than 200 people who knew generations of Sacklers, he brings to life the obsessive personalities and ferocious energy of some members."

John Gapper· Financial Times Read review ↗ Near the Top

"He is also indefatigable."

Laura Miller· Slate Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"A definitive, damning, urgent tale of overweening avarice at tremendous cost to society."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Keefe's book is ultimately an important record of private greed facilitated by a corrupted government."

Zachary Siegel· The New Republic Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"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."

Carol Haggas· Booklist Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Amid all the venality and hypocrisy, one of the terrible ironies that emerges from Empire of Pain is how the Sacklers would privately rage about the poor impulse control of 'abusers' while remaining blind to their own."

Jennifer Szalai· The New York Times Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"In Empire of Pain, Keefe marshals a large pile of evidence and deploys it with prosecutorial precision ..."

Jonathan Cohn· The Washington Post Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

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