The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
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 ... Many moving parts ... Fascinating.
Read Full Review >>
Contains a Mylar Miracle-Pack of intrigue, with everything you’d expect from a long-submerged, intergenerational blue-blooded drama. Along with the succession battle, it’s got phenobarbital addiction, involuntary commitment to a mental institution, boardroom humiliations, sexual predation, and a full century of functioning alcoholics. But its real business is the peculiar blood sport called filial love.
Read Full Review >>
Makes for juicy (if at times gossipy) reading—who doesn’t enjoy seeing a house of cards fall? ... Mr. Seabrook navigates these psychological rapids with aplomb. His portrayal of Jack is Salingeresque ... The author is especially good at situating the Seabrook business within the larger story of American consumerism ... Perhaps inevitably in such an intimate portrait, the writing in The Spinach King occasionally feels overly self-involved.
