cover image What Does Joan Say?: My Seven Years as White House Astrologer to Nancy and Ronald Reagan

What Does Joan Say?: My Seven Years as White House Astrologer to Nancy and Ronald Reagan

Joan Quigley. Birch Lane Press, $17.95 (218pp) ISBN 978-1-55972-032-8

As Nancy Reagan's astrologer for seven years, San Franciscan Quigley influenced the timing of the President's speeches, public appearances, surgery and trips. In this self-congratulatory tell-all, she also claims that she softened Ronald Reagan's stance toward Gorbachev, paved the way for a friendly Geneva Summit, helped Reagan win two presidental elections and protected him from potential assassins. She takes credit for helping to shape his ``visionary'' strategy of particle-beam weapons in space (Star Wars), for giving First Lady Nancy an image-overhaul and for defusing the controversy over the president's visit to Bitburg cemetery where Nazis are buried. Separate chapters cover the birth charts of Reagan and Gorbachev and the ``breathless possibilities'' in the chemistry between them. Although this tiresome memoir would have worked better as a magazine article, it offers an intimate, different, unintentionally devastating slant on the Reagan White House. (Apr.)