Gratuit avec l'essai de 30 jours

Choisissez 1 livre audio par mois dans notre incomparable catalogue.
Écoutez à volonté des milliers de livres audio, de livres originaux et de balados.
Accédez à des promotions et à des soldes exclusifs.
L'abonnement Premium Plus se renouvelle automatiquement au tarif de 14,95 $/mois + taxes applicables après 30 jours. Annulation possible à tout moment.
Page de couverture de Empire of Pain

Empire of Pain

Auteur(s): Patrick Radden Keefe
Narrateur(s): Patrick Radden Keefe
Essayer pour 0,00 $

14,95$ par mois après 30 jours. Annulable en tout temps.

Acheter pour 48,25$

Acheter pour 48,25$

Payer avec la carte finissant par
En confirmant votre achat, vous acceptez les conditions d'utilisation d'Audible et la déclaration de confidentialité d'Amazon. Des taxes peuvent s'appliquer.

Description

National Book Critics Circle Nominee

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

New York Times 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 best-selling author of Say Nothing

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.

Empire of Pain 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.

Arthur 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.

Forty 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 35 billion dollars in revenue, and to launch a public health crisis in which hundreds of thousands would die.

This 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 20th-century Brooklyn to the seaside palaces of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Cap d’Antibes to the corridors of power in Washington, DC.  Empire of Pain chronicles the multiple investigations of the Sacklers and their company, and the scorched-earth legal tactics that the family has used to evade accountability.

Empire of Pain 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.

©2021 Patrick Radden Keefe (P)2021 Random House Audio

Ce que les critiques en disent

New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books of the Year • One of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of the Year • TIME Magazine 100 Must Read Books of 2021 • One the Best Books of the Year: NPR, Slate, EW, Boston Globe, Goodreads, The Guardian, Town & Country, BuzzFeed, LitHub, Vulture, and more

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and Finalist for the Baillie Gifford Winner of Winners Award

One of President Obama's Favorite Books of the Year

“An engrossing (and frequently enraging) tale of striving, secrecy and self-delusion….Keefe nimbly guides us through the thicket of family intrigues and betrayals… Even when detailing the most sordid episodes, Keefe’s narrative voice is calm and admirably restrained, allowing his prodigious reporting to speak for itself. His portrait of the family is all the more damning for its stark lucidity.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

“I read everything he writes. Every time he writes a book, I read it. Every time he writes an article, I read it … he’s a national treasure.”—Rachel Maddow, host of MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” and author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Blowout

“A true tragedy in multiple acts. It is the story of a family that lost its moorings and its morals… Written with novelistic family-dynasty and family-dynamic sweep, EMPIRE OF PAIN is a pharmaceutical FORSYTHE SAGA, a book that in its way is addictive, with a page-turning forward momentum.”—David M. Shribman, The Boston Globe

D'autres livres audio du même...

Ce que les auditeurs disent de Empire of Pain

Moyenne des évaluations de clients
Au global
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 étoiles
    543
  • 4 étoiles
    54
  • 3 étoiles
    5
  • 2 étoiles
    3
  • 1 étoile
    1
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 étoiles
    472
  • 4 étoiles
    57
  • 3 étoiles
    6
  • 2 étoiles
    0
  • 1 étoile
    0
Histoire
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 étoiles
    477
  • 4 étoiles
    52
  • 3 étoiles
    3
  • 2 étoiles
    2
  • 1 étoile
    0

Évaluations – Cliquez sur les onglets pour changer la source des évaluations.

Classer par :
Filtrer
  • Au global
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Histoire
    5 out of 5 stars

It hurts to read this book.

Before you overdose, opioids kill you one day at a time. In 2013, at age 83, my mother had a hip replacement. It hurt. She saw a locum in the small Canadian town where she lived. “Don’t worry,” he said, “you can take as much as you want, you won’t get addicted.” Anyone who is reading this book knows what happens next.

You can’t recover, or the supply dries up. So you manage to keep getting sicker. One cane became two. Two canes became a walker. The walker became a wheelchair. Terrible, terrible pain, can’t get out of bed anymore. The path to the nursing home strewn with lies, cruelty, recklessness, despair. While her overdoses were not fatal, opioids ruined her, and they tore our family apart. My mom died in 2017, still trying to figure out how to get “something stronger.”

The book resonated with me because it located our experience on the continuum of pain and death created by the Sackler Empire. So much suffering and loss is still happening two decades after the you-can’t-get-addicted lie was exposed. I read the book, and I wept.

Today is Mother’s Day.

Un problème est survenu. Veuillez réessayer dans quelques minutes.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.

18 les gens ont trouvé cela utile

  • Au global
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Histoire
    5 out of 5 stars

One of the best Expose stories I ever read

This is a story of a Pharma scandal (OxyContin) that I knew a little from the recent press coverage of the family’s settlement in court.

Patrick Keefe brings this scandal to life by tracing the Sackler’s family history and the progression of their pursuits as drug manufacturers.

The wealth of data presented in this book, its insightful analysis and beautifully written prose is what makes the book such a delight to read, despite the tragedy associated with the OxyContin scandal.

Most importantly this is a book that is probably best enjoyed in its audio, rather than written version. That is because Patrick does a superb interpretative job of reading it.

Don’t get discouraged by the book’s length. You will be satisfied from beginning to the very end.

Un problème est survenu. Veuillez réessayer dans quelques minutes.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.

5 les gens ont trouvé cela utile

  • Au global
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Histoire
    5 out of 5 stars

Great, objective overview of the path of Purdue

Well written, extremely well researched and thorough. Provides a comprehensive insight into how the Sackler family came into their wealth, and more broadly highlights some of the issues around pharmaceutical marketing and general corruption of the government agencies responsible.

Un problème est survenu. Veuillez réessayer dans quelques minutes.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.

2 les gens ont trouvé cela utile

  • Au global
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Histoire
    5 out of 5 stars

Fascinating, frightening and essential listening!

Ever since reading an article in the Guardian a number of years ago on the Sackler family, I have been both fascinated and disgusted and the complete disregard that this family had for life. Their horrific arrogance to use the blood money they received from all the victims of OxyContin for their philanthropy and an addiction of their own to slap their name on any building they saw fit is beyond comprehension.
There are countless books/articles/videos on the devastation of OxyContin…but no book has ever dived as deep into the lengths that this family has gone to give a false narrative of exactly what their intentions were from the very beginning.
The narrator manages to keep you hooked and interested throughout, not an easy feat for such a long book!

Un problème est survenu. Veuillez réessayer dans quelques minutes.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.

2 les gens ont trouvé cela utile

  • Au global
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Histoire
    5 out of 5 stars
  • JMS
  • 2021-06-09

I predict major awards for this one! Unforgettable

Every once in a while, I listen to work of narrative non-fiction so extraordinary, so outrageous, and so heartbreaking that I’m reminded that truth is stranger than fiction. Empire of Pain is all those things. If you listen to this audiobook, prepare to feel angry. Even outraged. Listen to my complete review on the Audiobook Reviews in Five Minutes podcast

Un problème est survenu. Veuillez réessayer dans quelques minutes.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.

2 les gens ont trouvé cela utile

  • Au global
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Histoire
    5 out of 5 stars

Living it

Being one of perhaps thousands of parents with a child in the grips of opioid addiction this book did not provide me relief that perhaps I had hoped for. Rather I am left disgusted and angered and steadfast that we as a society have in no way dealt with what led to this crisis in a way that we could say ‘it’ll never happen again’.

The depth and expanse of the history of repeated failures, criminality and decades of uninterrupted damage the author has revealed provides some understanding of what led us here. There is no mystery. There are however significant unanswered calls for accountability. That the FDA and Canada’s HPFB failed completely to protect the average citizen requires addressing.

A must read for the unveiling of the on-going crisis.

Un problème est survenu. Veuillez réessayer dans quelques minutes.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.

1 personne a trouvé cela utile

  • Au global
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Histoire
    5 out of 5 stars

Amazing book

This book read like a mystery novel, there were so many twists and turns. It was so well documented and researched. I had listened to a podcast called “the Wind of Change” by Patrick Radden Keene and so enjoyed how he narrated and researched this podcast that when I saw he had written Empire of Pain I immediately bought it on Audible.

Un problème est survenu. Veuillez réessayer dans quelques minutes.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.

1 personne a trouvé cela utile

  • Au global
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Histoire
    5 out of 5 stars

Wow!

An incredible feat of investigative journalism detailing the rise and fall of the Sackler family, who developed, marketed and sold OxyContin with a full understanding of its addictive nature and its contribution to the opioid crisis. Whatever you think you know, there's more. The author is a great narrator, too. Excellent.

Un problème est survenu. Veuillez réessayer dans quelques minutes.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.

1 personne a trouvé cela utile

  • Au global
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Histoire
    5 out of 5 stars

Remarkable

This seems to be one of the great, revealing works of our time. I am deeply impressed by Keefe’s research and writing style that kept me enthralled throughout.
Greed, by the wealthy, has been a topic I’ve been curious about for many years. This book brings the opportunity to see how the blind greediness of the Sackler family originated in the disturbing brilliance of Arthur Sackler to the blatant horror of the latter generations.
The legal and governing system’s corrupt associations with the wealthy is on full display.
May mercy be extended to the USA because you live in a warped and cruel form of capitalism.
Bravo to Keefe! You did incredible work.

Un problème est survenu. Veuillez réessayer dans quelques minutes.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.

1 personne a trouvé cela utile

  • Au global
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Histoire
    5 out of 5 stars
  • GCG
  • 2023-08-14

Outstanding!

This book held my attention from beginning to end; absolutely exceeded my expectations. Narration by the author was excellent. Definitely worth the read.

Un problème est survenu. Veuillez réessayer dans quelques minutes.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.

Vous avez donné votre avis sur cette évaluation.