Description
Book Synopsis'A tour de force' – Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain
From the doctor's office to the opioid crisis, The Hard Sell is the story of a pharmaceutical company that got Americans hooked on fentanyl – and how it was finally held to account. Now a Netflix Original Movie, Pain Hustlers, starring Emily Blunt and Chris Evans.
In the early 2000s, John Kapoor had already amassed a small fortune in pharmaceuticals when he founded Insys Therapeutics. A boom time for painkillers, he had developed a novel formulation of fentanyl, the most potent opioid on the market.
Kapoor, a brilliant scientist with relentless business instincts, was eager to make the most of his innovation. But there was a problem: the drug was approved only for cancer patients in dire condition. So he recruited an avaricious team, who employed a variety of deceptive techniques, from falsifying patient records to deceiving insurance companies
Trade Review
'This is that rare story of the opioid crisis in which the bad guys face a genuine reckoning. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. A tour de force.' -- Patrick Radden Keefe
'A fast-paced and maddening account . . . What’s most surprising and powerful about The Hard Sell is not one company’s criminality . . . as much as how institutionalized these practices were across the modern drug industry.' * New York Times Book Review *
A pacey crime caper set against the backdrop of the opioid crisis . . . When I tell you that reading “The Hard Sell” is like watching a Scorsese film, you will assume I am exaggerating. Pick it up and tell me I’m wrong * The New York Times *
Vivid . . . [An] insightful account of how a company that went public in the most successful IPO of 2013 soon ended up a poster child for corporate greed * The Boston Globe *
Does the world really need another book about the opioid crisis? . . . The Hard Sell by Evan Hughes proves a worthy addition to the collection. * The Washington Post *
A richly reported, mesmerizing tale, and a devastating indictment of our broken pharmaceutical industry. Everyone should read this book. -- Sheelah Kolhatkar, author of Black Edge
When you’re running a pharma startup, how does the obvious wrong thing to do become the thing you do anyway? The Hard Sell, fascinating in the fashion of a slow-moving train wreck, is a study of corruption -- Ted Conover, author of Newjack
