{"product_id":"book-egoo","title":"Empire of Pain","description":"\u003cb\u003eNATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE NOMINEE \u003ci\u003e•\u003c\/i\u003e A \u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES\u003c\/i\u003e NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR •  \u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES\u003c\/i\u003e 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 \u003ci\u003eSay Nothing\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEmpire of Pain\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArthur 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eForty 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis 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.  \u003ci\u003eEmpire of Pain\u003c\/i\u003e chronicles the multiple investigations of the Sacklers and their company, and the scorched-earth legal tactics that the family has used to evade accountability. \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEmpire of Pain\u003c\/i\u003e 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.","brand":"Penguin Random House","offers":[{"title":"Audiobook","offer_id":49398567993648,"sku":"BDegoo","price":27.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0879\/2784\/9264\/files\/206484-egoo-Square.jpg?v=1735512049","url":"https:\/\/downpour.com\/products\/book-egoo","provider":"Downpour","version":"1.0","type":"link"}