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krissy_reads's review against another edition
4.0
This is a long, dense book. I chose the audiobook for this reason. It took me a while to get through, and it made me incredibly angry. It's important to know this story, so I'm glad I stuck with it. This family continues to get away with contributing to the deaths of so many people.
kfolezzz's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
i really appreciated this deep dive in reporting and the thoroughness with which keefe dove in. a deeply weird, dark, sad story. but i also felt like this was not completely respectful of the readers’ time — so i didn’t love every second of it. i understand it’s meant to be the most definitive text to date, but it did drag a bit. not all the details were necessary.
mmccart4's review against another edition
5.0
Holy fuck. I don’t know how to be more articulate than that right now. This was so well done. I thought I knew a decent amount about Purdue pharma and the Sackler family and their role in the opioid epidemic but after reading this book I realize I had only scratched the surface. A horrifying display of the consequences of capitalistic greed. Keefe does a phenomenal job taking an extremely complicated multigenerational family history and writing it in a compelling, digestible, and factual way. It was so fascinating to follow the timeline of this dynasty and see how the family connects with so many other corrupt big names (e.g., trump and his posse, vomit).
julierebecca21's review against another edition
5.0
This book blew me away. I somehow knew NOTHING about this family and am now so fascinated, but also enraged. I will be thinking about this one for a long time. Going to watch Dopesick now!
ncalv05's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
cpope9's review against another edition
5.0
Infuriating but so well organized and presented.
There’s a special place in hell for eccentric rich people who use the rest of the human population as play things they can manipulate and destroy for their own benefit and profit. And the lunacy always passes on and gets further perverted with the generations.
This clan of awful people profit so overwhelmingly off of the pain and death of others (e.g. literally and intentionally creating the opioid epidemic to make money by selling the drugs). Aside from the crimes on display (despite them never having to pay for anything they did…so far at least), maybe the most interesting thing here is the insight into the inner functioning of high net worth and high power institutions (banks, businesses, museums, big pharma, government agencies, billionaire families, etc.). You come to see just how impossible justice is to render at the highest levels despite the overwhelming oppression the same justice system imposes at the lowest levels. The apparent power and moral disparity between the wealthy and powerful and everyone else is utterly astounding and damnable.
Regardless, this is a huge and hugely worthwhile and entertaining piece of nonfiction that is still highly relevant. Would recommend to anyone…but be prepared to be annoyed, infuriated, aghast, and/or confused at how rigged everything seems to be.
There’s a special place in hell for eccentric rich people who use the rest of the human population as play things they can manipulate and destroy for their own benefit and profit. And the lunacy always passes on and gets further perverted with the generations.
This clan of awful people profit so overwhelmingly off of the pain and death of others (e.g. literally and intentionally creating the opioid epidemic to make money by selling the drugs). Aside from the crimes on display (despite them never having to pay for anything they did…so far at least), maybe the most interesting thing here is the insight into the inner functioning of high net worth and high power institutions (banks, businesses, museums, big pharma, government agencies, billionaire families, etc.). You come to see just how impossible justice is to render at the highest levels despite the overwhelming oppression the same justice system imposes at the lowest levels. The apparent power and moral disparity between the wealthy and powerful and everyone else is utterly astounding and damnable.
Regardless, this is a huge and hugely worthwhile and entertaining piece of nonfiction that is still highly relevant. Would recommend to anyone…but be prepared to be annoyed, infuriated, aghast, and/or confused at how rigged everything seems to be.