John Seabrook

2 weeks ago | lithub.com | John Seabrook

My London-born great-grandfather, Arthur P. Seabrook, emigrated to the United States at the age of five. He arrived with his family at the Battery, on the southern tip of Manhattan, in January 1859. Over the next three generations, Arthur’s fifty-eight acres of vegetable and produce fields in southern New Jersey became the largest farm in state history.

Feb 9, 2025 | barnesandnoble.com | John Seabrook

The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American DynastyThe riveting saga of the Seabrooks of New Jersey, by one of the New Yorker’s most acclaimed storytellers.

Sep 15, 2024 | newyorker.com | John Seabrook

At Paquita, a tea shop in the West Village, Billy Corgan, the Smashing Pumpkins’ fifty-seven-year-old front man and main songwriter, asked if there was a pu-erh, a fermented Chinese tea, that he could try. “I’m a tea snob,” he said. In Paris recently he had a pu-erh that had been fermented for sixty years. “It was like I was drinking pure earth!”The server suggested a sticky-rice pu-erh. Corgan tipped the brim of the Cubs baseball cap that sat atop his gleaming pate. “I’ll try that,” he said.

Jan 28, 2024 | newyorker.com | John Seabrook

Sir Lucian Grainge, the chairman and C.E.O. of Universal Music Group, the largest music company in the world, is curious, empathetic, and, if not exactly humble, a master of the humblebrag. His superpower is his humanity.

Nov 19, 2023 | newyorker.com | John Seabrook

Over French toast at Ladybird, an East Village vegan place, Marr recalled selecting guitars for his collaborator, Pat Graham, to photograph. He soon realized that “Marr’s Guitars” was going to be more than a coffee-table book for fetishists. It became a musical memoir of his encounters with great guitars that, he said, “turned my daydreams into sound.” Each time he pulled out an instrument, he said, “I remembered what movies I was watching, why I bought it—who I fookin’ was.