Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author, most recently, of the New York Times bestseller Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, was selected as one of the ten best books of 2019 by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune and The Wall Street Journal, and was named one of the “10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade” by Entertainment Weekly. His previous books are The Snakehead and Chatter. His work has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. He is also the creator and host of the eight-part podcast Wind of Change.
A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin, by the prize-winning, bestselling author of Say Nothing
The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions—Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing a blockbuster painkiller that was the catalyst for the opioid crisis.
Empire of Pain begins with the story of three doctor brothers, Raymond, Mortimer and the incalculably energetic Arthur, who weathered the poverty of the Great Depression and appalling anti-Semitism. Working at a barbaric mental institution, Arthur saw a better way and conducted groundbreaking research into drug treatments. He also had a genius for marketing, especially for pharmaceuticals, and bought a small ad firm.
Arthur devised the marketing for Valium, and built the first great Sackler fortune. He purchased a drug manufacturer, Purdue Frederick, which would be run by Raymond and Mortimer. The brothers began collecting art, and wives, and grand residences in exotic locales. Their children and grandchildren grew up in luxury.
Forty years later, Raymond’s son Richard ran the family-owned Purdue. The template Arthur Sackler created to sell Valium—co-opting doctors, influencing the FDA, downplaying the drug’s addictiveness—was employed to launch a far more potent product: OxyContin. The drug went on to generate some thirty-five billion dollars in revenue, and to launch a public health crisis in which hundreds of thousands would die.
This is the saga of three generations of a single family and the mark they would leave on the world, a tale that moves from the bustling streets of early twentieth-century Brooklyn to the seaside palaces of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Cap d’Antibes to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. Empire of Pain chronicles the multiple investigations of the Sacklers and their company, and the scorched-earth legal tactics that the family has used to evade accountability. The history of the Sackler dynasty is rife with drama—baroque personal lives; bitter disputes over estates; fistfights in boardrooms; glittering art collections; Machiavellian courtroom maneuvers; and the calculated use of money to burnish reputations and crush the less powerful.
Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, exhaustively documented and ferociously compelling. It is a portrait of the excesses of America’s second Gilded Age, a study of impunity among the super elite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed and indifference to human suffering that built one of the world’s great fortunes.
發表於2024-12-23
Empire of Pain 2024 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載
I am floored. This is horrifying. I had to collect myself for a while before I could jot down anything. The level of depravity, greed and selfness is shocking. The fact that this is true history just knocks my socks off. The hair on the back of my neck was...
評分Very impressive book, you will have all kinds of human feelings in this book, awe, happy, sad, angry, despair, the description is good, almost like watching a tv series. As the author stated in the end of the book, “my intention was to tell a different kin...
評分這本書真的很棒,雖然很長但是沒有多餘的部分。關於Sackler family利用公司為自己牟利、不肯承認自己在整個opioid crisis中的責任、企圖利用錢和權勢地位收買整個司法/醫療體係這幾點就不多說瞭。談談除此之外令我印象深刻的幾點: 1. McKinsey在這件事情中所扮演的角色 2. Wha...
評分第一部分,感覺就是<Mad Men> 。一代猶太移民的兒子Arthur Sackler 從高中起就顯示瞭非凡卓越的經商天賦,弄一個yearbook 人傢高中生就能說服老師改成提成製,接廣告拉贊助,財源滾滾風生水起。不願意去放狗他的實際形象,寜可把在Madison Ave開廣告公司,纔華橫溢風流倜...
評分本書主要闡述瞭opioid crisis和sackler傢族的關係,可謂是張小夏小姐去年新書的反轉係列(作者讓大傢know their name)。本書可以幫助理解當今美國社會不信任FDA和big pharma的原因在哪。Sackler傢族從Arthur M幫助輝瑞推銷valium等鎮靜劑開始緻富 直到90年代中期richard為代錶...
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Some people are addicted to drugs, they are addicted to money
評分我以為Book 1的stereotypical老白男發傢史已經很讓人血壓飆升瞭,沒想到Book 2&3裡二代三代們的pathological-denial and accountability-avoiding真是歎為觀止的rage-inducing。我相信第一代進入製藥業的齣發點是好的,第二代發明oxycontin的齣發點是好的。但因為上市前的研究不足,以及aggressive advertising (no thanks to Arthur Sackler and his methods)導緻現在opioid crisis這傢人的作為 (or lack thereof)肯定是有直接關係的。書裡揭露齣有問題的不僅是這傢人,不僅是製藥業,不僅是資本,還有不作為的FDA、司法機構和法律漏洞
評分被The Sacklers的一係列操作驚呆瞭,玩轉FDA於掌心,獲得暴利,再用慈善之名洗白,最後再玩一齣宣告破産的金蟬脫殼,牛逼啊牛逼
評分真的是很勇敢很難得的一本書,作者在寫作的時候還在被人威脅。
評分第一部分arthur發傢史尤其精彩,可以說是page-turner。要是配一副family tree這種人物關係圖就更友好瞭。文筆很好(有用無用的詞匯和錶達又增加瞭!比如sunset做動詞,還有好笑的oxySacklers)。作者搜集並厘清那麼多資料和訪談,一邊還要對付sackler那邊的律師,最後匯總為一本五百多頁的書(有點太厚,說真心話)!後麵兩部分有點在看傲骨之戰的感覺,果然作者本身也是法律專業齣身(還娶瞭個律師老婆)。如同作者所言,這本書不會是有關這個傢族和鴉片藥物泛濫事件的最後一本書,還有很多未披露未公布的資料留待後來者分析。直到bring the whole truth to light.
Empire of Pain 2024 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載