John Seabrook

John M. Seabrook Jr. (born January 17, 1959)[1] is an American writer and journalist. He has worked for The New Yorker weekly magazine for many years,[2] and has four published books.

Biography

Seabrook graduated from St. Andrew's School (DE) in 1976, Princeton University in 1981 and received an M.A. in English Literature from Oxford.

He began his career writing about business and published in a wide variety of magazines and newspapers, including Manhattan, inc.,[3] Harper's, Vanity Fair, GQ, The Nation, The Village Voice, and the Christian Science Monitor. To date, he has published four books besides contributing numerous articles to The New Yorker.[4] A feature film by Marc Abraham based on his 2008 book Flash of Genius was released on October 2008, starring Greg Kinnear.[5] His latest book, The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty was published in 2025.

Bibliography

Books

  • Deeper: My Two-Year Odyssey in Cyberspace. Touchstone Books. 1997.[6][7]
  • Nobrow: the Culture of Marketing, the Marketing of Culture. Methuen. 2000.[8]
  • Flash of Genius and Other True Stories of Invention. St. Martin's Griffin. 2008.[9]
  • The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory. W. W. Norton & Company. 2015.[10]
  • The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty. W. W. Norton & Company. 2025. ISBN 978-1-324-00352-6.

Essays and reporting

Critical studies and reviews of Seabrook's work

Nobrow
The song machine

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Notes
  1. ^ YouTube.
  2. ^ Nolan Bushnell.
  3. ^ Michael Nesmith.
  4. ^ Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq.
  5. ^ Online version is titled "Game night with Laura Marling".
  6. ^ Title in the online table of contents is "Beyond 'Uptown Funk'".
  7. ^ Online version is titled "Behind the cellar door".
  8. ^ Online version is titled "Randy Newman contemplates the universe".
  9. ^ Online version is titled "Puerto Rico's Ortiz brothers light up horse racing".
  10. ^ Online version is titled "Can a Machine Learn to Write for The New Yorker?".
  11. ^ Online version is titled "An ex-drinker’s search for a sober buzz".
  12. ^ For comparison, see Peter Swirski's textbook on nobrow taste culture in America, From Lowbrow to Nobrow.

References

  1. ^ "Seabrook, John". Virtual International Authority File.
  2. ^ Kurutz, Steven (2015-11-17). "New Yorker Staffers (and Their Boss, David Remnick) Just Want to Rock". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-01-08.
  3. ^ Carmody, Deirdre (1990-06-22). "Like the 80's, Manhattan,inc. Ends". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-01-08.
  4. ^ Heffernan, Virginia (2008-01-13). "Ancestral Allure". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-01-08.
  5. ^ Stirland, Sarah Lai. "Book Review: 'Flash of Genius' Tells Quirky Stories of Invention". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2025-01-08.
  6. ^ Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (1997-02-13). "Getting Caught in the Web". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-01-08.
  7. ^ Bennahum, David S. (1997-02-16). "'I Got E-Mail From Bill!'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-01-08.
  8. ^ Royte, Elizabeth (2005-10-23). "Publish and Perish". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-01-08.
  9. ^ "Flash of Genius: And Other True Stories of Invention John Seabrook. St. Martin's Griffin, $14.95 (356pp) ISBN 978-0-312-53572-8". Publishers Weekly. September 1, 2008.
  10. ^ Touré (2015-10-16). "'The Song Machine,' by John Seabrook". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-01-08.