Horizon Information Portal

HSPLS site

eBooks/Audiobooks

Reading Program

Empire of pain [large type] : the secret history of the Sackler dynasty / Patrick Radden Keefe.

by Keefe, Patrick Radden, 1976- author.

View full image

New York : Random House Large Print, [2021]

Sackler family.

Sackler, Arthur M. -- Family.

Purdue Pharma L.P.

Rich people -- United States -- Biography.

Pharmaceutical industry -- Marketing.

Pharmaceutical industry -- Corrupt practices.

9780593416280 (large print ; paperback)

0593416287 (large print ; paperback)

xii, 974 pages (large print) ; 24 cm

First large print edition.

Prologue: The taproot -- Patriarch. A good name -- The asylum -- Med man -- Penicillin for the blues -- China fever -- The octopus -- The Dendur derby -- Estrangement -- Ghost marks -- To thwart the inevitability of death -- Dynasty. Apollo -- Heir apparent -- Matter of Sackler -- The ticking clock -- God of dreams -- H-bomb -- Sell, sell, sell -- Ann Hedonia -- The Pablo Escobar of the new millennium -- Take the fall -- Legacy. Turks -- Tamperproof -- Ambassadors -- It's a hard truth, ain't it -- Temple of greed -- Warpath -- Named defendants -- The phoenix -- Un-naming -- Afterword.

The Sacklers 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. Keefe begins with the three doctor brothers, Raymond, Mortimer and Arthur, who weathered the poverty of the Great Depression and appalling anti-Semitism. Working at a barbaric mental institution, Arthur conducted groundbreaking research into drug treatments, devised the marketing for Valium, and built the first great Sackler fortune. Forty years later the template he created to sell Valium was employed to launch a far more potent product: OxyContin. -- adapted from back cover.

Horizon Information Portal 3.25_9884

Powered by Dynix

© 2001-2013 SirsiDynix All rights reserved.

Horizon Information Portal