Empire of Pain

Summary

An investigation into the Sackler family, tracing three generations from the patriarch Arthur Sackler's advertising innovations to the role of Purdue Pharma, the family company, in aggressively marketing OxyContin and fuelling the opioid epidemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. Keefe uses court documents, internal emails, and extensive interviews to show how wealth and philanthropy were used to deflect accountability, and how institutions that accepted Sackler donations were slow to acknowledge their complicity. The book had direct real-world consequences, contributing to the pressure that led museums including the Met and the Louvre to remove the Sackler name from their galleries.