Ganador del Goodreads Choice Awards 2021 de Historia y Biograf as
Seleccionado como uno de los mejores libros de no-ficci n del 2021 por Publishers Weekly
Finalista del 2021 National Book Critics Circle 2021
La historia que inspir el documental de HBO Crime of the Century

Tras No digas nada, llega lo nuevo de Patrick Radden Keefe.

El retrato demoledor de una dinast a cuya fortuna se construy gracias a Valium y cuya reputaci n fue destruida por OxyContin.

El apellido Sackler adorna los muros de las instituciones m s distinguidas: Harvard, el Metropolitan, Oxford, el Louvre... Es una de las familias m s ricas del mundo, benefactora de las artes y las ciencias. El origen de su patrimonio siempre fue dudoso, hasta que sali a la luz que lo hab an multiplicado gracias a OxyContin, un potente analg sico que cataliz la crisis de los opioides en Estados Unidos.

El imperio del dolor empieza en la Gran Depresi n, con la historia de tres hermanos dedicados a la medicina: Raymond, Mortimer y el infatigable Arthur Sackler, dotado de una visi n especial para la publicidad y el marketing. A os despu s, contribuy a la primera fortuna familiar ideando la estrategia comercial de Valium, un revolucionario tranquilizante, para una gran farmac utica.

Tras unas d cadas fue Richard Sackler, el hijo de Raymond, quien pas a dirigir los negocios del clan, incluida Purdue Pharma, su propia empresa fabricante de medicamentos. Bas ndose en las t cticas agresivas de su t o Arthur para vender el Valium, lanz un f rmaco que hab a de ser definitivo: OxyContin. Con l ganaron miles de millones de d lares, pero terminar a por arruinar su reputaci n.

Desde 2017, Patrick Radden Keefe ha investigado los secretos de la dinast a Sackler: las complicadas relaciones familiares, los flujos de dinero, sus dudosas pr cticas corporativas... El resultado es una bomba period stica que relata el auge y declive de una de las grandes familias americanas y su oscuro emporio de la salud.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Finalist of the 2021 National Book Critics Circle

Winner of the Goodreads Choice Awards 2021 on History & Biography

Publishers Weekly Best Book 2021 Nonfiction

INSTANT 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, as featured in the HBO documentary Crime of the Century.

The Sackler name adorns 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, D.C. 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. 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.

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.

El Imperio del Dolor: La Historia Secreta de la Dinastía Que Reinó En La Industria Farmacéutica / Empire of Pain - häftad, Spanska, 2022