The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing a blockbuster painkiller that was the catalyst for the opioid crisis.Įmpire of Pain begins with the story of three doctor brothers, Raymond, Mortimer and the incalculably energetic Arthur, who weathered the poverty of the Great Depression and appalling anti-Semitism. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to the arts and the sciences. 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.Ī masterpiece of narrative reporting, Empire of Pain is a ferociously compelling study of impunity among the super-elite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed that built one of the world’s great fortunes.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. It follows the family’s early success with Valium to the much more potent Ox圜ontin, marketed with a ruthless technique of co-opting doctors, influencing the FDA, and downplaying the drug’s addictiveness. 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.Įmpire 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.
The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions-Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre.
Winner of the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards for Best History & BiographyĪ devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, whose fortune was built on Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by Ox圜ontin, by the prize-winning, bestselling author of Say Nothing.
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