Winnetka shop The Book Stall (811 Elm Street) welcomes acclaimed author Patrick Radden Keefe on Friday, November 18 at 6:30 pm to celebrate the paperback release of Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty. The New York Times bestseller is a portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium, and reputation destroyed by OxyContin. Empire of Pain is a compelling masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing that showcases the excesses of America's second Gilded Age. The book presents a relentless investigation of the naked greed and indifference to human suffering that built one of the world's greatest fortunes. Mr. Keefe will be in conversation with reporter Noah Kirsch. This event is free, registration is required. Please visit the Book Stall website or CLICK HERE to register. 
 
More About the Book: The history of the Sackler dynasty is rife with drama, from complicated personal lives to bitter disputes over estates, fistfights in boardrooms, glittering art collections, Machiavellian courtroom maneuvers, and the calculated use of money to burnish reputations and crush the less powerful. The Sacklers are one of the richest families in the world, but the source of the family fortune was vague, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing a blockbuster painkiller that was the catalyst for the opioid crisis.
 
Empire of Pain is the saga of three generations of a single family and the mark they would leave on the world. It follows the family’s early success with Valium to the much more potent OxyContin, marketed with a ruthless technique of co-opting doctors, influencing the FDA, and downplaying the drug’s addictiveness. Empire of Pain chronicles the multiple investigations of the Sacklers and their company, and the scorched-earth legal tactics that the family has used to evade accountability.
 
Jennifer Szalai of The New York Times says "An engrossing (and frequently enraging) tale of striving, secrecy and self-delusion…. Keefe nimbly guides us through the thicket of family intrigues and betrayals… Even when detailing the most sordid episodes, Keefe’s narrative voice is calm and admirably restrained, allowing his prodigious reporting to speak for itself. His portrait of the family is all the more damning for its stark lucidity.” 
 
More About the Author: Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of the New York Times bestseller Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, was selected as one of the ten best books of 2019 by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and The Wall Street Journal, and was named one of the "10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade" by Entertainment Weekly. His other books include The New York Times bestseller Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks, The Snakehead, and Chatter. His work has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. He is also the creator and host of the eight-part podcast Wind of Change.
 
More About our Conversation Partner: Noah Kirsch is the Wealth & Power Reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously he was a staff writer at Forbes magazine, where he wrote feature stories and investigative pieces across a wide range of topics. His work has been recognized among the "Best in Business" by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. Noah has appeared on CNN, Good Morning America, NPR's All Things Considered, and BBC Radio, among other outlets.