Best History & Biography
Share on Twitter
New to Goodreads? Get great book recommendations! Start Now

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
Rate it:
Open Preview
WINNER 19,969 votes
This year’s winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for History/Biography, Empire of Pain is an exhaustively researched profile of the Sackler family, the aristocratic American clan that made its fortune making and marketing the painkiller OxyContin. Patrick Radden Keefe is a master of the kind of narrative reporting style that brings novelistic intensity to rigorous nonfiction reporting. Keefe was also nominated for a GCA for his 2018 book, Say Nothing.

All Nominees •
169,518 votes total

19,969 votes
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
16,199 votes
The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate  Moore
15,574 votes
The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson
15,115 votes
Four Hundred Souls by Ibram X. Kendi
15,071 votes
Vanderbilt by Anderson Cooper
13,994 votes
Come Fly The World by Julia  Cooke
13,067 votes
How the Word Is Passed by Clint   Smith
11,760 votes
The Doctors Blackwell by Janice P. Nimura
11,692 votes
The Light of Days by Judy Batalion
11,653 votes
The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell
3,597 votes
The Three Mothers by Anna Malaika Tubbs
3,522 votes
On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed
3,487 votes
Four Lost Cities by Annalee Newitz
3,366 votes
Walk in My Combat Boots by James Patterson
3,030 votes
Madhouse at the End of the Earth by Julian Sancton
2,494 votes
Bag Man by Rachel Maddow
1,779 votes
The Taking of Jemima Boone by Matthew Pearl
1,505 votes
Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown
1,475 votes
Amazon Unbound by Brad Stone
1,169 votes
Zero Fail by Carol Leonnig