Keefe grew up in Dorchester Massachusetts and attended Columbia University. He launched a journalism career after finishing law school, and has been a contributing to The New Yorker since 2005, where he is now a staff writer. He received a National Magazine Award for Feature Writing in 2014.

In recent years he has become well-known for his narrative nonfiction works. Say Nothing, a chronicle of the sectarian strife in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, was published in 2018 and received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. Empire of Pain, a history of the Sackler family and the American pharmaceutical industry, was published in 2021 and received the Baillie Gifford Prize for nonfiction. Other book-length works include The Snakehead and Chatter. Keefe also hosted an eight-part podcast series on espionage and heavy metal music, called Winds of Change.

Koch is an avid wine collector and one of the chief figures in Keefe’s first essay on the controversy around counterfeit wine. Koch and his family are also well known for their contributions to American industry and politics: His brothers are now most famous for their donations to “conservative political candidates and causes” (2). Koch lives in a large mansion home to various collections, including old weapons and art, along with his wine cellar.