What could possibly be new about the Sackler family, the billionaire owners of Purdue Pharma?

That was a question I asked myself in the late fall of 2015 as I began doing research for the book that would become Pharma. The project I had pitched to my publisher was a comprehensive history of the American pharmaceutical industry, starting with patent drugs and finishing with biotechnology breakthroughs. Covering the full breadth of the domestic...