Sackler Dynasty: The Secret History

The Sackler dynasty's history is replete with drama—from their lavish personal lives and bitter estate disputes to boardroom fistfights and their calculated use of money to enhance their reputation and suppress the less powerful. The family's name adorns the walls of many prestigious institutions, such as Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, and the Louvre, as they are one of the wealthiest families in the world, renowned for their generous donations to the arts and sciences. However, the source of their vast fortune remained obscure until it was revealed that the Sacklers were responsible for the creation and marketing of a blockbuster painkiller that fueled the opioid crisis.

Empire of Pain, a New York Times best-seller and a National Book Critics Circle nominee, begins with the story of three Sackler brothers—Raymond, Mortimer, and the exceptionally driven Arthur—who weathered the hardships of the Great Depression and faced appalling anti-Semitism. While working at a harsh mental institution, Arthur recognized a better approach and conducted groundbreaking research into drug treatments. He also possessed a remarkable talent for marketing, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry, and acquired a small advertising firm.

Arthur devised the marketing strategy for Valium, which laid the foundation for the first substantial Sackler fortune. He then purchased a drug manufacturer, Purdue Frederick, which would be managed by Raymond and Mortimer. The brothers began amassing art collections, acquiring multiple wives, and building grand residences in exotic locations. Their children and grandchildren were raised in luxury.

Forty years later, Richard Sackler, Raymond's son, took over the family-owned Purdue. He employed the same template that Arthur Sackler had used to sell Valium—co-opting doctors, influencing the FDA, and downplaying the drug's addictive nature—to launch a far more potent product: OxyContin. This drug went on to generate approximately $35 billion in revenue and catalyze a public health crisis that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, meticulously documented and compellingly powerful. It is a portrait of the excesses of America's second Gilded Age, a study of the impunity enjoyed by the super-elite, and a relentless investigation into the naked greed and disregard for human suffering that built one of the world's great fortunes.

The book chronicles the multiple investigations into the Sacklers and their company, as well as the scorched-earth legal tactics the family has employed to evade accountability. It is a saga of three generations of a single family and the indelible mark they have left on the world, a tale that spans from the bustling streets of early 20th-century Brooklyn to the seaside palaces of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Cap d'Antibes, and ultimately to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C.

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