A book about a wealthy American family whose actions helped unleash the United States’ opioid epidemic — described by its author as a “story of hubris” — won Britain’s leading nonfiction book prize Tuesday.
Patrick Radden Keefe’s “Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty” was awarded the 50,000 pound ($67,000) Baillie Gifford Prize during a ceremony at London’s Science Museum.
Keefe’s book chronicles the billionaire Sackler clan, owner of Purdue Pharma, whose members used their fortune to fund museums and art galleries around the world. A reckoning has come with the revelation that much of that fortune was based on OxyContin, a powerful prescription painkiller that the company developed in the 1990s and marketed aggressively to doctors.