Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain is available on Audible as a 18 hrs 6 mins unabridged audiobook, narrated by Patrick Radden Keefe.
Publisher’s Summary
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE NOMINEE • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • 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. From the prize-winning and bestselling author of Say Nothing
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. The Sackler name has adorned 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.
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.
Audiobook Details
- Narrated by: Patrick Radden Keefe
- Length: 18 hrs 6 mins
- Publisher: Random House Audio
- Release year: 2021
- Audible category: Biographies & Memoirs / Entertainment & Celebrities / Biographies & Memoirs
Listener Ratings
Empire of Pain holds an average listener rating of 4.9/5 from 9576 Audible ratings.
On Audible, ratings for this title break down into narration performance and story separately:
- Performance (narration): 4.9/5
- Story: 4.9/5
- 5-star ratings: 88% of all ratings
What Audible Listeners Are Saying
5/5 stars — “Wow! Now I understand the opioid epidemic!”
Having come of age as Valium, then MS Contin, and Oxicontin became major approaches to dealing with anxiety and pain, and having heard physicians repeat the sales pitch they received from a drug sales rep, the information presented in this book was not only very interesting, but more important, very educational.
The author has been meticulous in researching the information that he presents. The book is well written, presenting the information in a historical context to explain how the Sackler family businesses managed to create and market the drugs that would destroy so many lives. I highly recommend this book.— Virginia McBride, Audible listener
5/5 stars — “Amazing important story!”
You won’t be able to put this book down! Keefe does an amazing job of reporting, writing… But he’s a gifted actor as well.When I suggested to my stepson, who is at Amazon, that he read this, he said, “He’s a friend… I already have the book. I have a bro crush on him, because he’s such a great guy, and
such a good writer. I want him to write something for us!”I, on the other hand, hope Keefe has time to take on the Trumps. And expose another dirty Billionaire Dynasty… One that almost ended my democracy.
— LoveFromBothSides, Audible listener
5/5 stars — “An excellent listen”
To find so many people in one family who care only about themselves leads me to believe that narcissism may be hereditary.— Planalp, Audible listener
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