Get Free Shipping on orders over $89
Empire of Pain : The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty - Patrick Radden Keefe

Empire of Pain

The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

By: Patrick Radden Keefe

Paperback | 12 April 2022

At a Glance

Paperback


RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%OFF

or 4 interest-free payments of $5.44 with

Ships in 5 to 7 business days

Winner of the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
Shortlisted for the 2021 Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2021


The gripping and shocking story of three generations of the Sackler family and their roles in the stories of Valium, OxyContin and the opioid crisis.

‘Jaw-dropping . . . Beggars belief’
The Sunday Times

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

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 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 host of the Wind of Change podcast Patrick Radden Keefe exhaustively documents the jaw-dropping and ferociously compelling reality. Empire of Pain is the story of a dynasty: a parable of twenty-first-century greed.

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), Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, 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. 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.

More in Science, Technology & Medicine Biographies

Being Patient : Close Encounters in Cancer World - Na'ama Carlin

RRP $34.99

$29.99

14%
OFF
Periodic Bitch - Emma Hardy

RRP $29.99

$24.99

17%
OFF
How To Change Your Mind : New Science of Psychedelics - Michael Pollan
Put Your Feet in the Dirt, Girl : A memoir - Sonia Henry

RRP $36.99

$29.75

20%
OFF
I, Vera : The Many Lives of Vera Gedroits, a Radical Princess - Miranda Seymour
Brainstorm : 2025 ABIA Social Impact Book of the Year - Richard Scolyer
Off the Charts - Georgie Carroll

RRP $34.99

$28.75

18%
OFF
We Are As Gods : A Survival Guide for the Age of Abundance - Peter H. Diamandis
The Assault on Truth - Jeffrey Masson

RRP $59.99

$42.75

29%
OFF