Explores the field of astrology from a historical perspective, noting the impact of Newton's system of the world on certain aspects of the astrological tradition, and explaining how astrological ideas have reappeared in modern scientific theory. 50,000 first printing. *Starred Review* Few Americans realized during the 1980s how much the resident of the White House resembled emperors of ancient Babylon and Rome: like them, President Reagan consulted astrologers. A gifted science writer, Berlinski not only links personalities (the Great Communicator waves at Berossos of the Chaldeas) but also interweaves grand themes: science melds with religion, and metaphysics fuses with politics in a narrative of surpassing color and drama. Though Berlinski approaches his topic with intelligent skepticism, he acknowledges the creative ingenuity and even the scientific acumen of many of its founders. He also expresses deep empathy for the credulous humans who have spun astrological meanings out of their own yearnings for some way of seeing into the turbulent future, some way of glimpsing cosmic significance in the hurly-burly of everyday life. And with piquant episodes culled from millennia of material, Berlinski gives astrology hauntingly human faces: a shrewd soothsayer confronts a cruel tyrant with a laconic--and accurate--prophecy of how they both shall die; an imprisoned astrologer unnerves a Nazi leader with uncanny predictions about the fuhrer's death. Berlinski acknowledges that modern science has driven astrology into society's subterranean margins, yet he mischievously exposes the stubborn persistence in physics and sociobiology of the same magical thinking that once pervaded astrology. Berlinski gives readers good reason to relish this irreverent foray into an exotic if dubious art. Bryce Christensen Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved "A witty and dramatic narration with evident scholarship and authority and, mostt importantly, a sense of wonder." -- Library Journal "David Berlinski's fascinating look at the history of this ancient art will keepp you glued to its pages." -- curledup.com "If you find yourself taking astrology seriously, read this book-the latest of aa rich literature of refutations." -- Baltimore Sun Review, Oct 26 2003 If you find yourself or someone you care for taking astrology seriously, you wouuld be prudent to read this book-the latest of a rich literature of refutations. -- Review If you find yourself...taking astrology seriously, you would be prudent to read this book the latest...rich literature of refutations. -- Baltimore Sun Review, October 26, 2003 David Berlinski, author of the bestselling A Tour of the Calculus received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and is a regular contributor to Commentary and Forbes ASAP. He lives in Paris. LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, I wanted to see into the future, and if the future was blank and inscrutable, the past would have to do. For my kind of time travel, books are more revealing than stars. That morning I trudged down the banks of the Seine to visit the Bibliothèque Nationale, the great national library of France. The thing is like a Babylonian ziggurat, four glass and steel towers rising somberly from a plinth almost a city block in area. Access is by means of a wide but very steep series of polished wooden steps. There are no banisters or rails and when the stairs are wet, purchase is difficult. Elderly scholars very often lose their footing and fall badly. If the library is a monument to poor design and clumsy architecture, it is also a link in the unbroken chain of libraries that extends from the ancient world to the twenty-first century. The collection that it contains is matchless, one of the glories of French culture. But whatever those glories, I had a cold. It was that time of year. Everyone in Paris was sniffling. The métro had been chilly and full of hoarse honkers, all of them looking peevish and indignant. The library was at least warm and comfortable, a kind of pastel glow suffusing all the reading rooms and the long echoing corridors. There was no one waiting in the rare books and manuscripts division. The seats at the central table were unoccupied, and the computers arranged in rows like so many squat and waiting penguins were all blank, their open eyes sightless. The librarian was a tall, elegant woman. She knew and understood the manuscript collection, but like everyone working at the Bibliothèque, she had come to regard visitors as a considerable inconvenience. I had asked permission to see the library's copy of Major-General Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson's The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia. Rawlinson was one of the great soldier-scholars of the nineteenth century, a man whose fine intelligence and wide-ranging curiosity had elephant-walked over the entire Near East. I was interested in volume III of his four-volume work-A Selection from the Miscellaneous Inscriptions of Assyr