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Empire of Pain

The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

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Empire of Pain

By: Patrick Radden Keefe
Narrated by: Patrick Radden Keefe
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About this listen

The gripping and shocking story of three generations of the Sackler family and their roles in the stories of Valium, OxyContin and the opioid crisis. The inspiration behind the Netflix series Painkiller, starring Uzo Aduba and Matthew Broderick. Read by the author, Patrick Radden Keefe.

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
A BBC Radio 4 'Book of the Week'
Shortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
Shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction
One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books

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 in 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 Oxycontin, a blockbuster painkiller that was a catalyst for the opioid crisis – an international epidemic of drug addiction which has killed nearly half a million people.

In this masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, award-winning journalist and host of the Wind of Change podcast Patrick Radden Keefe exhaustively documents the jaw-dropping and ferociously compelling reality. Empire of Pain is the story of a dynasty: a parable of twenty-first-century greed.

‘You feel almost guilty for enjoying it so much’ – The Times

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Critic reviews

There are so many "they did what?" moments in this book, when your jaw practically hits the page
This is no dense medical tome, but a page-turner with a villainous family to rival the Roys in Succession, and one where every chapter ends with the perfect bombshell.
The story of the Sacklers and OxyContin is a parable of the modern era of philanthropy being deployed to burnish the reputations of financiers and entrepreneurs . . . [A] tour-de-force
Put simply, this book will make your blood boil . . . a devastating portrait of a family consumed by greed and unwilling to take the slightest responsibility or show the least sympathy for what it wrought . . . a highly readable and disturbing narrative. (John Carreyrou, author of Bad Blood)
An engrossing (and frequently enraging) tale of striving, secrecy and self-delusion . . . Even when detailing the most sordid episodes, Keefe’s narrative voice is calm and admirably restrained, allowing his prodigious reporting to speak for itself. His portrait of the family is all the more damning for its stark lucidity. (Jennifer Szalai)
Transformative . . . Once I started listening to Keefe reading the book, I found myself wishing it were even longer. I’ve since forced the audiobook on several other people who agree that Keefe is . . . a dazzling historian and storyteller . . . This was the book that compelled me to buy a waterproof speaker so I didn’t have to stop listening while I was in the shower (Melissa Kirsch)
A true tragedy in multiple acts. It is the story of a family that lost its moorings and its morals . . . Written with novelistic family-dynasty and family-dynamic sweep, Empire of Pain is a pharmaceutical Forsythe Saga, a book that in its way is addictive, with a page-turning forward momentum. (David M. Shribman)
Explosive . . . Keefe marshals a large pile of evidence and deploys it with prosecutorial precision . . . Keefe is a gifted storyteller who excels at capturing personalities.
An air-tight indictment of the family behind the opioid crisis . . . [an] impressive exposé (Harriet Ryan)
A damning portrait of the Sacklers, the billionaire clan behind the OxyContin epidemic . . . [Keefe] has a knack for crafting lucid, readable descriptions of the sort of arcane business arrangements the Sacklers favored. (Laura Miller)
Keefe has a way of making the inaccessible incredibly digestible, of morphing complex stories into page-turning thrillers, and he's done it again with Empire of Pain . . . A scathing — but meticulously reported — takedown of the extended family behind OxyContin. It's equal parts juicy society gossip and historical record of how they built their dynasty and eventually pushed Oxy onto the market. (Seija Rankin)
All stars
Most relevant
A wonderful demonstration of investigative journalism. A maddening account of an extraordinary miscarriage of justice and another black mark in the record of Trump’s Department of Justice. But as Keefe makes clear this scandal was almost a century in the making and yet another example of our passive acceptance of corporate greed. We are living through a second Gilded Age even more venal and corrupt than the first.

That makes this book sound like the work of a self-righteous bleeding-heart. Far from it. It is written (and narrated) with an acerbic wit and an urgency that makes it as compelling as any thriller. The Sackler family may never read it, but I’d urge you too.

Essential Reading

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Fascinating story of a family who wanted their name to be remembered. They achieved that goal but perhaps not how they had originally envisaged. This story makes me appreciate my country's National Health Service where there isn't the opportunity for corruption of the kind found in the USA's way of delivering health care.

Fascinating story of greed and indifference to suf

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This is an important book which chronicles the unrestrained pursuit of profit over many years. The behaviour of the characters is shocking, in.particular the indifference to the suffering, and the greed. It also makes one wonder how the defence lawyers can sleep at night. The author has done a great job of marshalling the facts from an overwhelming body of records.

Shocking account of greed

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A great piece of investigative journalism presented in an excellent narrative which, although very disturbing, is an enthralling listen. Think the TV series “Succession”.

A great piece

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At the end of the book the writer rightly feels compelled to remind us that this is a work of narrative non-fiction. He does so because the tale he tells is so unbelievable in its interrogation of greed and corruption as to seem fictional. This is a book for the ages, well read, by the author and thrilling in its entirety

An Insightful Thrilling Expose

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