How long does it take to read Empire of Pain?
Patrick Radden Keefe, Ricard Gil
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, Ricard Gil takes about 13 hours 12 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 13 hours 12 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 2021. 720 pages, about 198,000 words.
27 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 22 hours |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 13 hours 12 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 8 hours 15 minutes |
The page count is the median across 12 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Empire of Pain examines the Sackler family and the fortune it built, tracing its roots to three brothers raised in Brooklyn by Jewish immigrants. All three become doctors, but the eldest, Arthur, proves gifted at advertising and helps pioneer the practice of promoting medicines directly to physicians, while concealing his business interests behind others. The family later gains control of Purdue Pharma and sells an opioid painkiller by courting doctors, officials and politicians. Keefe argues that the Sacklers played a central part in the opioid epidemic and worked to shield themselves from blame.
This summary was written by AI and checked by a second AI model. How these are chosen.
Subjects: Biographies, Pharmaceutical industry, Corrupt practices, drugs, marketing, philanthropists
