Description
| Author/Contributor(s): | Keefe, Patrick Radden |
| Publisher: | Reservoir Books |
| Date: | 1/4/2022 |
| Binding: | Paperback |
| Condition: | NEW |
Ganador del Goodreads Choice Awards 2021 de Historia y Biografías
Seleccionado como uno de los mejores libros de no-ficción del 2021 por Publishers Weekly
Finalista del 2021 National Book Critics Circle 2021
La historia que inspiró el documental de HBO Crime of the Century
Tras No digas nada, llega lo nuevo de Patrick Radden Keefe.
El retrato demoledor de una dinastía cuya fortuna se construyó gracias a Valium y cuya reputación fue destruida por OxyContin.
El apellido Sackler adorna los muros de las instituciones más distinguidas: Harvard, el Metropolitan, Oxford, el Louvre… Es una de las familias más ricas del mundo, benefactora de las artes y las ciencias. El origen de su patrimonio siempre fue dudoso, hasta que salió a la luz que lo habían multiplicado gracias a OxyContin, un potente analgésico que catalizó la crisis de los opioides en Estados Unidos.
El imperio del dolor empieza en la Gran Depresión, con la historia de tres hermanos dedicados a la medicina: Raymond, Mortimer y el infatigable Arthur Sackler, dotado de una visión especial para la publicidad y el marketing. Años después, contribuyó a la primera fortuna familiar ideando la estrategia comercial de Valium, un revolucionario tranquilizante, para una gran farmacéutica.
Tras unas décadas fue Richard Sackler, el hijo de Raymond, quien pasó a dirigir los negocios del clan, incluida Purdue Pharma, su propia empresa fabricante de medicamentos. Basándose en las tácticas agresivas de su tío Arthur para vender el Valium, lanzó un fármaco que había de ser definitivo: OxyContin. Con él ganaron miles de millones de dólares, pero terminaría por arruinar su reputación.
Desde 2017, Patrick Radden Keefe ha investigado los secretos de la dinastía Sackler: las complicadas relaciones familiares, los flujos de dinero, sus dudosas prácticas corporativas… El resultado es una bomba periodística 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
INSTANTNEW 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 whosereputation was destroyed by OxyContin. From the prize-winning andbest-selling author of Say Nothing, as featured in the HBO documentary Crimeof 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 therichest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to the artsand the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, untilit emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing ablockbuster 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 ofthe Great Depression and appalling anti-Semitism. Working at a barbaricmental institution, Arthur saw a better way and conducted groundbreakingresearch into drug treatments. He also had a genius for marketing, especiallyfor pharmaceuticals, and bought a small ad firm.
Arthur devised the marketing for Valium and built the first great Sacklerfortune. He purchased a drug manufacturer, Purdue Frederick, which would berun by Raymond and Mortimer. The brothers began collecting art, and wives,and grand residences in exotic locales. Their children and grandchildren grewup in luxury.
Forty years later, Raymond’s son Richard ran the family-owned Purdue. Thetemplate Arthur Sackler created to sell Valium – co-opting doctors,influencing the FDA, downplaying the drug’s addictiveness – was employed tolaunch a far more potent product: OxyContin. The drug went on to generatesome 35 billion dollars in revenue, and to launch a public health crisis inwhich hundreds of thousands would die.
This is the saga of three generations of a single family and the mark theywould leave on the world, a tale that moves from the bustling streets ofearly 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 multipleinvestigations of the Sacklers and their company, and the scorched-earthlegal tactics that the family has used to evade accountability. The historyof the Sackler dynasty is rife with drama – baroque personal lives; bitterdisputes over estates; fistfights in boardrooms; glittering art collections;Machiavellian courtroom maneuvers; and the calculated use of money to burnishreputations 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 theexcesses of America’s second Gilded Age, a study of impunity among the superelite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed and indifference tohuman suffering that built one of the world’s great fortunes.
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