Reviews with content warning for Death - Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

Reviews tagging 'Death'

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

53 reviews

mondovertigo's review against another edition

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dark informative reflective slow-paced

4.75

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hilaryreadsbooks's review against another edition

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5.0

[Thank you Anchor Books for the gifted copy]

Many of us know that powerful people are capable of terrible things, but many of us do not know what those terrible things often are. Patrick Radden Keefe’s EMPIRE OF PAIN: THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE SACKLER DYNASTY is an incredible tome of research and investigation that exposes just a part of this terrible world. Focused less on the actual opioid epidemic, EMPIRE OF PAIN hones in on this powerful family and how greed, ambition, and power led to this crisis. Keefe writes with empathy and clarity, and his storytelling, as it was with SAY NOTHING, was phenomenal. Even at 500 pages, I finished this book in just two nights.

What stood out to me the most was the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma’s manipulation of pain patients (and I appreciate Keefe’s note at the end explaining his intention to not contribute to stigmatization of those who use opioids, but rather to demonstrate that the Sacklers and Purdue “have for decades invoked the interests of pain patients as a fig leaf for their own avarice.” The facts that Keefe presents behind this are sobering—there were multiple instances where the Sacklers and other Purdue executives ignored addiction data that foresaw the crisis; instead, they would deny any links and continue to sell Oxy, even using pain patients as examples of Oxy’s effectiveness in their ads. There was, as well, Purdue Pharma’s intention to start selling addiction treatment drugs that target the very market of addiction they created (a business model used by many big pharma companies).

EMPIRE OF PAIN will stay with me for a long time.

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stephaniezd's review against another edition

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dark informative reflective tense medium-paced

5.0

Impeccably researched and compelling in it's telling. Easily the best non-fiction I have read this year. I have already recommended to several people. Jaw-dropping at times in the unabashed ridiculousness that the focuses of the tale engaged in. Just an incredible story.

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orireading's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative slow-paced

5.0

luv u patrick radden keefe <3

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gnataliec's review against another edition

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informative sad medium-paced

5.0

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_fallinglight_'s review

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challenging dark informative sad tense medium-paced

4.5

Surreal, insightful, albeit and clinical deep dive into the depraved and unhinged Sackler criminal billionaire family. This book is one of many definitive proofs that the billionaire is incompatible with humanity at this point and greed is an addiction as equally destructive and demoralizing as any substance addiction if not more or worse. The lengths the rotting rich go to to keep their corrosive money are so twisted but it's also morbidly impressive how they weave the web of connections and buy their way into getting the results they want. Particularly this family who honestly wouldn't have made it without ass kissers and enablers and unscrupulous people making their perversity possible bc most of them are so offensively insensitive and stupid.

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