It's easy to snicker at psychic predictions of the Vietnam War ending in 1969, or famine in Italy by 1972, but beyond the simple failure of prophecy it illustrates the role that these celebrity psychics play in voicing our hopes and our fears. Another constant theme in these books is China launching a nuclear war - the PRC only got the Bomb in 1964, a fresh scare for Americans still reeling from a bipolar Cold War order. Assassination predictions for the Kennedy clan and marriage for widow Jackie are an easy gambit. Her prediction of "big business" helping out farmers (page 150) is a particularly bitter piece of black comedy given the '80s farm crisis.
Paperback Library, 1970
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