My reading (and listening) usually jumps from subject to subject and style to style, but when I recently finished The Hard Sell, Hughes's thorough evisceration of the executives behind Insys Therapeutics, a (briefly) billion-dollar pharma startup built on the aggressive marketing of a single addictive pain drug, I wanted to stay with the subject, and immediately followed it with Keefe's rightfully acclaimed account. The Hard Sell is compelling and infuriating, but Empire of Pain is a masterpiece, a patient and rich profile of three generations of Sacklers, full of brilliance, ambition, and greed, in which Oxycontin, the pill that made them billions while leading many thousands to addiction and death, doesn't appear until halfway through the tale. A riveting and authoritative new classic in one of my very favorite genres, white-collar true crime.