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

About The Book

The Sackler name adorns 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 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.

Editorial Reviews

'It’s superbly written, exhaustively researched, full of fierce moral resolve, jaw-droppingly revealing, and above all propulsively readable. More than a match for any novel, and I think a future classic.' – Andrew Holgate, Literary Editor, The Sunday Times, chair of the Baillie Gifford judges, 2022

'Jaw-dropping . . . Beggars belief'– The Sunday Times

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

'A page-turner with a villainous family to rival the Roys in Succession, and one where every chapter ends with the perfect bombshell' - Esquire

'A chilling and mesmerizing read, “substantially built on the family’s own words”. Which is what makes it so damning.' – The Observer

'He [Patrick Radden Keefe] adopts a calmly astonished tone as he tells a shocking story of callousness, cover-ups and monumental greed.' – The Guardian, Audiobook of the week

About Author

Patrick Radden Keefe

Patrick Radden Keefe is an award-winning staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, as well as two previous critically-acclaimed books, The Snakehead, and Chatter. 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