Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe (Now a NETFLIX TV series)

The shocking story of three generations of the Sackler family and their roles in the stories of Valium, OxyContin and the opioid crisis. The inspiration behind the Netflix series Painkiller, starring Uzo Aduba and Matthew Broderick.

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

The Sunday Times Bestseller

A BBC Radio 4 'Book of the Week'

Shortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award

One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of the Year

Shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction

'I gobbled up Empire of Pain . . . a masterclass in compelling narrative nonfiction.' – Elizabeth Day, The Guardian '30 Best Summer Reads'

The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions like Harvard and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations in 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 Oxycontin. A blockbuster painkiller that was a catalyst for the opioid crisis – an international epidemic of drug addiction which has killed nearly half a million people.

In this masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, award-winning journalist and author of Say Nothing (now streaming on Disney+), Patrick Radden Keefe, exhaustively documents the jaw-dropping reality. Empire of Pain is the story of a dynasty, and twenty-first-century greed.

'There are so many "they did what?" moments in this book, when your jaw practically hits the page' – Sunday Times

Review

There are so many "they did what?" moments in this book, when your jaw practically hits the page ― Sunday Times

This is no dense medical tome, but a page-turner with a villainous family to rival the Roys in Succession, and one where every chapter ends with the perfect bombshell. ― Esquire

The story of the Sacklers and OxyContin is a parable of the modern era of philanthropy being deployed to burnish the reputations of financiers and entrepreneurs . . . [A] tour-de-force ― Financial Times

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, author of Bad Blood ― New York Times Book Review

‘You feel almost guilty for enjoying it so much’ – The Times

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador; Main Market edition (3 Mar. 2022)

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Paperback ‏ : ‎ 560 pages

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1529063108

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1529063103

Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up

Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.4 x 13 x 19.6 cm

Customer reviews: 4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars    10,321 ratings

About the Author

Patrick Radden Keefe is an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction) and Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (winner of the Orwell prize and now streaming on Disney+), as well as two previous critically-acclaimed books, The Snakehead and Chatter. He is the writer and host of the eight-part podcast Wind of Change on the origins of the Scorpions’ power ballad, which The Guardian named the #1 podcast of 2020. 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.