Empire of Pain is a multi-generational biography of the Sackler family; it is an expose on one of the biggest business and medicine scandals of the last few decades; and it is a warning about how the tools that the government and our scientific and academic institutions can be manipulated to do people harm for profit.
Keefe explores the fascinating story of the Sackler family from revolutionizing the marketing of pharmaceuticals to unleashing tranquilizers of the American public to creating and inflaming the opioid epidemic of the early 21st century.
Keefe delved through court documents, conducted interviews, and used many other sources to provide exquisite detail to every part of the story from developing the personalities of the Sacklers to revealing the lengths they went to squeeze every possible penny out of Oxycontin with complete knowledge of the risks and the costs.
The writing makes this entertaining, the research makes it illuminating, and the content of the Sackler story is shocking and terrifying. Empire of Pain may go down as one of the top non-fiction books of the decade.
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