Books › Empire of Pain
Empire of Pain
820 pages
A sweeping, infuriating family saga that exposes the devastating human cost of unchecked corporate greed and reputation laundering.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like watching a slow-motion train crash from the inside of a gilded mansion. It is a masterclass in narrative nonfiction that reads with the propulsive, addictive pacing of a thriller, yet carries the heavy, dread-soaked weight of a sprawling American tragedy. The prose is razor-sharp and meticulously controlled, guiding you through decades of boardroom machinations and glittering philanthropy while never letting you forget the devastating human cost accumulating in the background. It is an infuriating, deeply gripping experience that will leave you vibrating with righteous anger. Perfect for readers who devour deep-dive investigations into the dark machinery of wealth, power, and systemic corruption, this is a story that gets under your skin and stays there.
- Mood
- infuriating
- dread-soaked
- tragic
- tense
- Tone
- incisive
- damning
- meticulous
- objective
- gripping
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- corporate greed · reputation laundering · moral bankruptcy · systemic corruption · generational wealth
- The writing
- Elegantly structured and razor-sharp, weaving exhaustive journalistic research into the sweeping, dramatic cadence of a multi-generational saga.
- The arc
- Moves from a fascinating tale of immigrant ambition into a slow-building, infuriating chronicle of devastating moral collapse.
- Who it's for
- Fans of narrative nonfiction who love deep-dive investigations into the dark, hidden machinery of wealth, power, and systemic corruption.
Content notes
- drug addiction
- overdose
- medical trauma
- suicide
- corporate malfeasance
About the book
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, known for their lavish donations to 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 a blockbuster painkiller that was the catalyst for the opioid crisis.
Empire 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. Working at a barbaric mental institution, Arthur saw a better way and conducted groundbreaking research into drug treatments. He also had a genius for marketing, especially for pharmaceuticals, and bought a small ad firm.
Arthur devised the marketing for Valium, and built the first great Sackler fortune. He purchased a drug manufacturer, Purdue Frederick, which would be run by Raymond and Mortimer. The brothers began collecting art, and wives, and grand residences in exotic locales. Their children and grandchildren grew up in luxury.
Forty years later, Raymond’s son Richard ran the family-owned Purdue. The template Arthur Sackler created to sell Valium—co-opting doctors, influencing the FDA, downplaying the drug’s addictiveness—was employed to launch a far more potent product: OxyContin. The drug went on to generate some thirty-five billion dollars in revenue, and to launch a public health crisis in which hundreds of thousands would die.
This 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. 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.
Description from Open Library.
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