Ganador del Goodreads Choice Awards 2021 de Historia y Biografias

Seleccionado como uno de los mejores libros de no-ficcion del 2021 por Publishers Weekly

Finalista del 2021 National Book Critics Circle 2021

La historia que inspiro el documental de HBO Crime of the Century

Tras No digas nada, llega lo nuevo de Patrick Radden Keefe.

El retrato demoledor de una dinastia cuya fortuna se construyo gracias a Valium y cuya reputacion fue destruida por OxyContin.

El apellido Sackler adorna los muros de las instituciones mas distinguidas: Harvard, el Metropolitan, Oxford, el Louvre… Es una de las familias mas ricas del mundo, benefactora de las artes y las ciencias. El origen de su patrimonio siempre fue dudoso, hasta que salio a la luz que lo habian multiplicado gracias a OxyContin, un potente analgesico que catalizo la crisis de los opioides en Estados Unidos.

El imperio del dolor empieza en la Gran Depresion, con la historia de tres hermanos dedicados a la medicina: Raymond, Mortimer y el infatigable Arthur Sackler, dotado de una vision especial para la publicidad y el marketing. Anos despues, contribuyo a la primera fortuna familiar ideando la estrategia comercial de Valium, un revolucionario tranquilizante, para una gran farmaceutica.

Tras unas decadas fue Richard Sackler, el hijo de Raymond, quien paso a dirigir los negocios del clan, incluida Purdue Pharma, su propia empresa fabricante de medicamentos. Basandose en las tacticas agresivas de su tio Arthur para vender el Valium, lanzo un farmaco que habia de ser definitivo: OxyContin. Con el ganaron miles de millones de dolares, pero terminaria por arruinar su reputacion.

Desde 2017, Patrick Radden Keefe ha investigado los secretos de la dinastia Sackler: las complicadas relaciones familiares, los flujos de dinero, sus dudosas practicas corporativas… El resultado es una bomba periodistica que relata el auge y declive de una de las grandes familias americanas y su oscuro emporio de la salud.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Finalist of the 2021 National Book Critics Circle

Winner of the Goodreads Choice Awards 2021 on History & Biography

Publishers Weekly Best Book 2021 Nonfiction

INSTANT
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
best-selling author of Say Nothing, as featured in the HBO documentary Crime
of the Century.

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 35 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 20th-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.