Book Alert / The Fated Sky

The Fated Sky -- Astrology in History by Benson Bobrick, Simon & Schuster, $26, 369 pages, ISBN #0-7432-2482-5, index, bibliography, source notes, glossary, glossy b&w illustrations.

Should astrology be taken seriously? While we love e-mails at History Wire, forget the ones suggesting we must be acolytes of Nancy Reagan to ask such a question. So, would you listen to Benson Bobrick? Benson who? The man The New York Times Book Review calls "perhaps the most interesting historian writing in America today."

His new book, Bobrick's publisher says, is "the first serious book to fully engage astrology...." If we all lived several centuries ago, Bobrick says, many of us might not be so dismissive of it. "Classical astrology fell into disrepute," he says, "not because it was disproven. In fact, it was because the idea of God as the supreme being and almighty creator -- which Astrology depended on -- went out of favor with the age of Enlightenment."

Astrology, according to the author, "is the oldest of the occult sciences" and were that not enough, "the origin of science itself." It "follows the belief that everything on earth is patterned in the sky." So, against this backdrop, the old American presidential death cycle gains renewed respect -- or does it? Supposedly, a U.S. president died every 20 years from William Henry Harrison on because Saturn and Jupiter conjoined in an Earth sign at that time. So following Harrison were Lincoln, Garfield. McKinley, Harding, FDR, and JFK, all goners.  Reagan nearly died in 1981 but survived a generation, and Bush remains alive 6 years after his anticipated date with destiny.

Still, unless you're convinced you've put together all the pieces that make the world work, it might be worth hearing Bobrick out.