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

It's so clear that the author put so much effort into researching and truly understanding the impact of the Sackler Dynasty and their painkiller empire. Many parts of this were extremely powerful and emotional - it cut true and deep.

I listened to this book, which was about twenty hours (it was a lot). I think as far as nonfiction goes, I didn't love the structure of the book - I think the presentation of facts and anecdotes, particularly over audio was sometimes difficult to understand and connect. That's why I rated it a three star.

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jhbandcats's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

The first section of Empire of Pain is background on the three brothers who started what became Perdue Pharma; the rest of the book is about how OxyContin came to destroy so many lives. The whole experience of reading the second and third sections of this book is one of deep frustration and often anger.

Keefe’s dense, heavily researched account of the rise of the Sackler family (they developed Valium so they were knew about addiction from early on) and the way they created the opioid epidemic is absolutely maddening. To see them literally getting away with murder is, well, criminal.

Keefe interviewed two hundred people and had access to hundreds of thousands of pages of correspondence and depositions. He’s able to wade through this mass of information and create a cohesive, easily understood narrative. I know little about medicine and even less about business but the story he details was accessible even to a layman.

Literally more than half the book includes references, footnotes, an index - this is a phenomenally well-documented work. Everyone should read it. It’s a testament to how the rich control the lives of the rest of us.

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