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

4.0

Good book and would highly recommend for ppl that are interested in how the opioids epidemic became a thing. biggest takeaways are how little testing happened before huge claims about oxy addictions were being made by Purdue and the Sacklers and how outrageously immoral the internal company culture was, with an singlemindedness on selling and never stopping to think about the impact. I definitely think Radden Keefe did a good job at showing how the Sacklers and Purdue are responsible together and that they should bear more responsibility that a small amount of money for them. It is hard to say what that would actually be as it feels so native to the family and the company that in some ways it would be hard to change. Still, the total lack of blame or wrongdoing that they maintained is laughable.