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If you've ever wondered how the US suffered so horrifically from the Opioid epidemic, this book will enrage you. By advertising, influencing the FDA, and convincing doctors that Oycontin was a miracle drug which would reduce everyday pain without addiction, this impacted American life with profound consequences. The depth of the Sackler family's moral indifference in putting profits over the users' well being is truly astounding.
Well researched, this book reads as a family saga, much like the tv drama Succession. Only real.
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“An engrossing and deeply reported book about the Sackler family, the owners of Purdue Pharma. Their company created Oxycontin, the opioid introduced in the mid-90s that sent a wave of addiction and death across the country. Unlike previous books on the epidemic, Empire of Pain is focused on the wildly rich, ambitious and cutthroat family that built its empire first on medical advertising and later on painkillers. In his hands, their story becomes a great American morality tale about unvarnished greed dressed in ostentatious philanthropy.” —Time Magazine, The Best Books of 2021 So Far
Non fiction and self help
Some of my very favorites!
While the title is a bit rude and it reads like a Frat boy of the 90s wrote it, this book is full of gems and I give it to all of my young friends. I wish I had read it when I was 30 years old.
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​In short, life is full of choices and indeed disappointments. Author Manson exhorts the reader to figure out exactly what you actually have the talent to do and what to care about most, because otherwise you are adrift in a sea of "f*cks."
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He uses several examples of this. One is the career of William James who was a profound disappointment to his family. Sickly , and depressed, he started and dropped out of medical school. Later he managed to pull himself up by taking responsibility for all of his decisions without hiding behind any sort of deflection. He became a founding father of Psychology and a philosopher.
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As Manson writes
"Don't just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow."
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