Empire of Pain

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE NOMINEE ΓÇó A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR ΓÇó NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER ΓÇó A grand,devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler familyfamed for their philanthropywhose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin. From the prize-winning and bestselling author of Say Nothing The history of the Sackler dynasty is rife with dramaΓÇöbaroque 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 institutionsΓÇöHarvardthe Metropolitan Museum of ArtOxfordthe Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the worldknown for their lavish donations to the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vaguehoweveruntil 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 brothersRaymondMortimer and the incalculably energetic Arthurwho weathered the poverty of the Great Depression and appalling anti-Semitism. Working at a barbaric mental institutionArthur saw a better way and conducted groundbreaking research into drug treatments. He also had a genius for marketingespecially for pharmaceuticalsand bought a small ad firm. Arthur devised the marketing for Valiumand built the first great Sackler fortune. He purchased a drug manufacturerPurdue Frederickwhich would be run by Raymond and Mortimer. The brothers began collecting artand wivesand grand residences in exotic locales. Their children and grandchildren grew up in luxury. Forty years laterRaymondΓÇÖs son Richard ran the family-owned Purdue. The template Arthur Sackler created to sell ValiumΓÇöco-opting doctorsinfluencing the FDAdownplaying the drugΓÇÖs addictivenessΓÇöwas employed to launch a far more potent product: OxyContin. The drug went on to generate some thirty-five billion dollars in revenueand 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 worlda tale that moves from the bustling streets of early twentieth-century Brooklyn to the seaside palaces of GreenwichConnecticutand Cap dΓÇÖAntibes to the corridors of power in WashingtonD.C. Empire of Pain chronicles the multiple investigations of the Sacklers and their companyand the scorched-earth legal tactics that the family has used to evade accountability. Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writingexhaustively documented and ferociously compelling. It is a portrait of the excesses of AmericaΓÇÖs second Gilded Agea study of impunity among the super elite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed and indifference to human suffering that built one of the worldΓÇÖs great fortunes.