Visions of the Future: Almanacs, Time, and Cultural Change 1775-1870

Why is it a laughing matter when an American president consults an astrologer, while political scientists, economists and meteorologists all seem to depend on predicting the future? This book examines the `death' of astrology's respectability and links it to changing concepts of time in the nineteenth century, through an explanation of the circumstances in which one type of knowledge (`superstitious') could be replaced by another (`scientific').