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Presents a portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, who built their fortune on the sale of Valium and later sponsored the creation and marketing of one of the most commonly prescribed and addictive painkillers of the opioid crisis.

The Sacklers 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. Keefe begins with the three doctor brothers, Raymond, Mortimer and Arthur, who weathered the poverty of the Great Depression and appalling anti-Semitism. Working at a barbaric mental institution, Arthur conducted groundbreaking research into drug treatments, devised the marketing for Valium, and built the first great Sackler fortune. Forty years later the template he created to sell Valium was employed to launch a far more potent product: OxyContin. -- adapted from jacket

Prologue: The taproot

Patriarch. A good name ; The asylum ; Med man ; Penicillin for the blues ; China fever ; The octopus ; The Dendur derby ; Estrangement ; Ghost marks ; To thwart the inevitability of death

Dynasty. Apollo ; Heir apparent ; Matter of Sackler ; The ticking clock ; God of dreams ; H-bomb ; Sell, sell, sell ; Ann Hedonia ; The Pablo Escobar of the new millennium ; Take the fall

Legacy. Turks ; Tamperproof ; Ambassadors ; It's a hard truth, ain't it ; Temple of greed ; Warpath ; Named defendants ; The phoenix ; Unnaming

Afterword.

Sackler, Arthur M. > Family.

Rich people > United States > Biography.

Pharmaceutical industry > Marketing.

Pharmaceutical industry > Corrupt practices.

Pharmaceutical industry > Corrupt practices.

Pharmaceutical industry > Marketing.

Biography.

Biographies.

Family histories.

Family histories.

Biographies.