The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty

by John Seabrook Narrated by Dion Graham

Overview

The riveting saga of the Seabrook Family, by one of the New Yorker's most acclaimed storytellers.



The 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 wine cellars, and movie star girlfriends-hid dark secrets that led to the implosion of the family business.



At the heart of the narrative is a multi-generational succession battle. It's a tale of family secrets and Swiss bank accounts, of half-truths, of hatred and passion-and lots and lots of liquor. The Seabrooks' colorful legal and moral failings took place amid the trappings of extraordinary privilege. But the story of where that money came from is not so pretty.



A compelling tale of class and privilege, betrayal and revenge-three decades in the making-The Spinach King explores the author's complicated family legacy and the dark corners of the American Dream.

Editorial Reviews

Harper’s magazine

A Mylar Miracle-Pack of intrigue, with everything you’d expect from a long-submerged, intergenerational blue-blooded drama.”

Kirkus Reviews

Uncovering devastating family secrets…deftly weaving personal and commercial history to document the rise and fall of a towering agricultural enterprise.”

Airmail

"A tale worthy of Faulkner…as rich a tale about a troubled dynasty―and father-son relationships―as you will read this year.”

Susan Orlean

"As sweeping in its scope as a great novel, The Spinach King is . . . a rich story, populated with characters that will stay with you long after you finish reading."

William Finnegan

"The story of the family Seabrook is extraordinary. Raw ambition gets it rolling in the unprepossessing farmlands of New Jersey. It becomes a tour of the American 20th century via frozen vegetables – both world wars, the Depression, labor struggles, the Klan. John Seabrook, the scion who became a writer, finds the perfect measured tone, leavened by irony and belly laughs, for his weird saga. He digs up secrets, scandals, and production quotas, and ends by bringing it all uncomfortably close to home."

Janny Scott

"The Spinach King is an astonishing tale of American ingenuity, exploitation, and betrayal, pried from the burnished bedrock of family myth by one of the best nonfiction writers of our time."

Jessica Bruder

"An intergenerational saga with drama to rival King Lear and enough social-climbing audacity to make a Kardashian blush. . . . This is the tale of a patriarch immolating on the flames of his own ambition and the rotten roots of a great American archetype: the self-made man."

Russell Shorto

"John Seabrook’s patrimony was an agricultural empire, or at least the story of it. Like all empires, it was built by brute force. John Seabrook pulls no punches in detailing his forebears’ unsavory deeds."

Rich Cohen

"Like The Sopranos, it all happened in New Jersey."

Stacy Schiff

"What happens when a fearless investigative reporter turns his sights on his own family? In John Seabrook’s case, the answer is magic."

Nicola Twilley

"Succession but make it spinach. With cameos from Zsa Zsa Gabor and the Ku Klux Klan . . . and an unhealthy serving of money, ambition, and betrayal."

Eric Schlosser

"The Spinach King is an epic American tragedy, a powerful book about status, wealth, corruption, and succession that reveals much about how our ruling class still behaves today."

Rich Cohen author of Sweet and Low: A Family Story

"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."

Kirkus Reviews

2025-03-22
Uncovering devastating family secrets.

Seabrook, aNew Yorker staff writer, set out to write the dramatic story of his family’s Seabrook Farms, dubbed byLife magazine as the “biggest vegetable factory on earth.” An elegant essayist and meticulous researcher, Seabrook drew on the voluminous diaries of his father, combed through decades of newspaper coverage, bank records, and litigation, and interviewed scores of former workers, business partners, and family members. He describes in intimate detail the multigenerational story of the company’s transformation from his immigrant great-grandfather’s small farm to the largest in New Jersey with 50,000 acres, growing one-third of the nation’s frozen vegetables. The author’s grandfather, C.F. Seabrook, prospered by modeling his vegetable-growing enterprise on the automobile assembly line. He hired thousands of immigrant workers from places as far-flung as Jamaica and Estonia, Black workers from the South, and 2,000 Japanese Americans from World War II incarceration camps. But all was not well within the family. Beset by alcohol-fueled misjudgments and intergenerational mistrust, the company’s meteoric rise “triggered a psychic case of the bends…not from nitrogen bubbles in the blood but from champagne bubbles at the dinner table.” With profits from frozen lima beans and spinach, the author’s father, Jack, led a glamorous lifestyle, including a romance with Eva Gabor. Seabrook grew up comfortably in this well-heeled WASP homestead, but finding a 1934Nation article radically changed his view of the company and his family. The article documents a strike at Seabrook where workers protested wage cuts and decrepit (and segregated) housing. C.F. enlisted vigilantes, including the Ku Klux Klan, who beat the strikers with rubber hoses and axe handles. The author’s heart sank when he learned that his grandfather and beloved uncles were part of the brutal assault. Though excessive in some details, this lucidly written family history provides a unique lens through which to view changes in food production and distribution in the United States.

Deftly weaving personal and commercial history to document the rise and fall of a towering agricultural enterprise.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940193021377
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	06/24/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged

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