Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

'A real-life thriller, a page-turner, a deeply shocking dissection of avarice and calculated callousness. We knew some of this story; it turns out we didn't know the half of it. Exhaustively researched and written with grace and gravity, Empire of Pain unpeels a most terrible American scandal.

You feel almost guilty for enjoying it so much.' Melanie Reid, The TimesThe gripping and shocking story of three generations of the Sackler family and their roles in the stories of Valium and Oxycontin, by the prize-winning, bestselling author of Say Nothing. 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 in 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 Oxycontin, a blockbuster painkiller that was a catalyst for the opioid crisis-an international epidemic of drug addiction which has killed nearly half a million people. In this masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, Patrick Radden Keefe exhaustively documents the jaw-dropping and ferociously compelling reality. Empire of Pain is the story of a dynasty: a parable of 21st century greed.