"Having left this material for his writer son, my father must have wanted the story told, even if he couldn't bear to tell it himself."
So begins the multigenerational story of a forgotten American dynasty, a farming family from the bean fields of southern New Jersey that became as wealthy, glamorous and powerful as Gilded Age aristocrats. The autocratic patriarch, C. F. Seabrook, was hailed as the "Henry Ford of agriculture". His son Jack, a keen businessman, was poised to take over what Life called "the biggest vegetable factory on earth." But the carefully cultivated facade-glamorous outings by horse-drawn carriage, hidden cellars of world-class wine and movie stars skinny-dipping in the pool-hid dark secrets that led to the implosion of the family business. In a compulsively readable story of class and privilege, betrayal and revenge, John Seabrook explores his complicated family legacy and dark corners of the American Dream.
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"John Seabrook wryly details the rise and fall-and Oedipal struggles-of his family's farming empire... This is a tremendous tale" -- John Gapper - Financial Times "This tale of the quarrelsome family, the devious father, the advances in food production and the ultimate disintegration of a business that had lasted for a century is told with the clarity and verve one would expect of a professional journalist." -- Frances Cairncross - Literary Review "Keen, sophisticated and appealing .... Seabrook brings the ease and command of New Yorker-style reportage to bear on his own family. It's a shocking but juicy story, one he tells by harnessing his gift for quietly observing details that lesser writers would miss and then deploying them with the energy of a man who has skin in the game .... Captivating reading." -- Cree LeFavour - New York Times Book Review "His parents met, shipboard, en route to Monte Carlo for Grace Kelly's wedding. His father relied on a mechanized dry-cleaner's rack to separate his formal day wear from his formal evening wear. His grandfather made his mark as "the Henry Ford of agriculture." What happens when a fearless investigative reporter turns his sights on his own storied family? In John Seabrook's case the answer is magic, as he unpacks, artfully and frankly, all that comes tumbling, along with the smoking jackets, from that capacious closet." -- Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams "John Seabrook's patrimony was an American agricultural empire, or at least the story of it. Like all empires, it was built by brute force. Seabrook pulls no punches in detailing his forebears' unsavory deeds, and along the way gives a lively primer on flash-freezing, boil-in-the-bag spinach, and the marketing of the green salad. This is a deeply personal book that is also a tale of 20th century American ingenuity and ambition." -- Russell Shorto, author of Taking Manhattan and Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob "As sweeping in its scope as a great novel, The Spinach King is that rare work of nonfiction that folds meticulous reporting into a stirring story of a prominent American family's rise and fall, pain and redemption. It's a rich story, literally and figuratively, populated with characters, including Seabrook himself, that will stay with you long after you finish reading." -- Susan Orlean, author of The Library Book "John Seabrook's mother told him not write this story, and yet here it is, The Spinach King, the unforgettable epic of the Seabrook Farms frozen food empire, with its cabbage and peas, factory towns, indentured labor, patriarchs and restless sons. It's the story of America, the good and bad, the rise and fall, the promise and corruption, opulence, vacation homes, fantastic fortunes and beautiful clothes, gangsters, diesel trucks, strikes and strike breakers, captured in the story of a single family and built on the secrets that were meant to stay in the safe in back of the wine cellar in the basement of the mansion at the bottom of New Jersey. Lucky for us, John Seabrook, like FDR, turns out to be a traitor to his class in the best possible way. And like the Sopranos, it all happened in New Jersey." -- Rich Cohen, author of Sweet and Low: A Family Story "In The Spinach King, John Seabrook sets out to recount the little-known and fascinating story of the Henry Ford of agriculture-and the revolution in vegetable growing, packaging, processing, and preservation that made boil-in-bag Lima beans the curse of many a 20th-century childhood. Beneath it, however, lies a much more tragic and gripping tale: "Succession" but make it spinach. With cameo appearances from Zsa Zsa Gabor and the Klan, settings from "Deep South" Jersey to Prince Rainier's superyacht, and an unhealthy serving of money, ambition, and betrayal, Seabrook's memoir reveals the emotional trauma behind your frozen veggies." -- Nicola Twilley, host of Gastropod and author of Frostbite
John Seabrook has been a staff writer at The New Yorker for more than three decades. The Spinach King is his fifth book. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
