# Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty - Hardcover

by **Patrick Radden Keefe** (Author)

**_NEW YORK TIMES_ BESTSELLER - A _NEW YORK TIMES_ NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR - 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 _Say Nothing._**

**"A real-life version of the HBO series _Succession_ with a lethal sting in its tail...a masterful work of narrative reportage." - Laura Miller, _Slate_**

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, but the source of the family fortune was vague--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_ 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. It follows the family's early success with Valium to the much more potent OxyContin, marketed with a ruthless technique of co-opting doctors, influencing the FDA, downplaying the drug's addictiveness. _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.

A masterpiece of narrative reporting, _Empire of Pain_ is a ferociously compelling portrait of America's second Gilded Age, a study of impunity among the super-elite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed that built one of the world's great fortunes.

### Author Biography

**Patrick Radden Keefe** is a staff writer at _The New Yorker_ and the author, most recently, of the _New York Times_ bestseller _Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland_, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, was selected as one of the ten best books of 2019 by _The_ _New York Times Book Review,_ _The_ _Washington Post,_ the _Chicago Tribune_ and _The_ _Wall Street Journal_, and was named one of the "10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade" by _Entertainment Weekly_. His previous books are _The Snakehead_ and _Chatter_. His work has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. He is also the creator and host of the eight-part podcast _Wind of Change._

**Number of Pages:** 560

**Dimensions:** 1.8 x 9.1 x 6.3 IN

**Illustrated:** Yes

**Publication Date:** April 13, 2021

**Award:** ALA Notable Books (2022)

## Details

- **Price:** 35.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 35.00 USD | In stock |

## Images

- Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty - Hardcover

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