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A review by jhbandcats
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
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.
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.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical content, Classism, Death, Drug abuse, Trafficking, Drug use, Gaslighting, Suicide, Addiction, Cancer, and Chronic illness