Thousands of court documents have become public through discovery, including internal company emails and memos that give new insight into the family’s actions and thinking. In the past few years, numerous lawsuits filed against Purdue by state attorneys general, cities and counties have finally cracked open the Sacklers’ dome of secrecy. But what would normally be a weakness becomes a strength because Keefe, a New Yorker staff writer and the author of, among other books, the prizewinning “ Say Nothing” (2019), a history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, is blessed with great timing. Keefe comes late to the party and he’s careful to credit Meier and others for their trailblazing journalism (Meier even appears as a character in several chapters). Hundreds of news articles and several books have been written about it, most notably “ Pain Killer,” by the former New York Times reporter Barry Meier. The broad contours of this story are well known. In the process, the Sacklers became fabulously rich, reaping, according to one expert’s court testimony, some $13 billion. By aggressively promoting Ox圜ontin, their company, Purdue Pharma, ushered in a new paradigm under which doctors began routinely prescribing the potent and dangerously addictive narcotics.

Not all of this wreckage can be laid at the feet of the Sacklers, but a lot of it can. Some 500,000 Americans have died from opioid-related overdoses since 1999, and millions more have become hopelessly addicted.

Empire of pain patrick radden keefe