Sackler, a family name synonymous with great wealth, is emblazoned on the walls of storied institutions like Harvard, Oxford, the Louvre, and Metropolitan Museum of Art. While being obsessed with having their name conspicuously displayed on well-known institutions of science and art, the family largely obscured the fact that it was associated with the drug Oxycodone, later called OxyContin, which killed nearly 500,000 people. But as the drug became widely known and advertised, newspapers and media outlets rushed to reveal the family’s ownership of Purdue Pharma as the developer and marketer of the blockbuster painkiller. This book is the sweeping story of the rise and fall of an American family dynasty obsessed with spreading its philanthropic reputation, yet unwilling, even though they made millions of dollars from sales of OxyContin, to take responsibility for the deaths of the people who died from addiction to the drug.

While many accounts of the opioid crisis focus on victims of opioid addiction, Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain highlights the three Sackler brothers, who were the perpetrators of the family’s downfall. Arthur, the oldest, had little modern-day connection to Purdue Pharma, except for owning one-third of the company, but he was the adman who marketed the tranquilizer, Valium, in the 70’s. Valium became the pharmaceutical industry’s first blockbuster pain killer, which was addictive, and later became a controlled substance. Raymond and Mortimer, the two younger brothers, along with Richard Sackler, a nephew, invested in research leading to OxyContin, and are blamed for soiling the Sackler name when they set out to change the narrative of the American Medical Association establishment that warned of the danger of strong opioids.