[ad_1]
from: JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press
Posted: 11/16/2021 / 4:15 PM CST
Updated: 11/16/2021 / 6:05 PM CST
FILE – Author Patrick Radden Keefe testifies before a House Oversight Committee hearing on laws brought about by the bankruptcy of Purdue Pharma and members of the wealthy Sackler family who own the company on Tuesday, June 8, 2021 on Capitol Hill in Washington were inspired. Keefe’s book Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, about an affluent American family whose actions helped spark the opioid epidemic in the United States, won the UK’s leading non-fiction award on Tuesday, November 16, 2021. (AP Photo / Manuel Balce Ceneta, file)
LONDON (AP) – A book about an affluent American family whose actions helped spark the opioid epidemic in the United States – described by its author as the “History of Hubris” – won the UK’s leading non-fiction award on Tuesday.
Patrick Radden Keefe’s “Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty” was awarded the £ 50,000 (US $ 67,000) Baillie Gifford Prize at a ceremony at London’s Science Museum.
Keefe’s book tells a chronicle of the billionaire Sackler clan, owners of Purdue Pharma, whose members use their fortune to fund museums and art galleries around the world. One bill came with the disclosure that much of that fortune was based on OxyContin, a powerful prescription pain reliever that the company developed and aggressively marketed to doctors in the 1990s.
“Empire of Pain” traces the rise of the family fortune among three doctor brothers and their children and its downfall in a web of lawsuits and bankruptcy proceedings.
Keefe said it was “a portrait of three generations of a very badly behaved family, but also, on a deeper level, a story of systems and impunity.”
“I think in a way it’s a story about hubris,” he said. “In many ways, it’s a story of denial.”
Amid protests against its role in the opioid business, the Sackler name has been stripped from wings and galleries of institutions such as the Louvre in Paris and the Serpentine Gallery in London in recent years. Institutions such as the UK’s National Portrait Gallery and the Tate Gallery have suspended family donations due to their role in the opioid crisis, which has been linked to more than 500,000 deaths in the US alone since 2000.
Some opioid deaths have been attributed to OxyContin and other prescription pain relievers, although most are due to illegal forms of opioids such as heroin and illegally made fentanyl.
Sackler’s family members have denied wrongdoing despite their company pleading guilty twice to federal crimes for their opioid practices. In September, a U.S. federal judge approved a conditional settlement that would take the family out of Purdue ownership and convert the business into a charity, whose profits would go towards government-led addiction prevention and treatment efforts.
Keefe accepted the award and thanked “all of the many lawyers who have advised me on what to do with all of the incoming mail” when he was threatened by the Sackler family while he was working on the book.
“It’s not been a situation I’ve ever considered bail, especially under family pressure,” he told the Associated Press. “If anything, the pressure I got convinced me that I was probably on the right track.”
The Baillie Gifford Prize recognizes English-language books from all countries in the fields of contemporary affairs, history, politics, science, sports, travel, biography, autobiography and art.
“Empire of Pain” beat five other finalists: Cal Flyn’s environmental research “Islands of Abandonment”; Harald Jähner’s “Aftermath: Life in the Consequences of the Third Reich 1945–1955”; Kei Miller’s Essays on Discrimination, “Things I’ve Withheld”; John Preston’s media mogul biography “Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell”; and the memoirs of the Albanian writer Lea Ypi “Free: Coming of Age at the End of History”.
[ad_2]
https://www.kxan.com/entertainment-news/book-about-sackler-family-and-opioid-crisis-wins-uk-prize/
