Here is a classic encounter-today's most celebrated investigator of the supernatural versus the most famous of all prophets, the legendary 16-century astrologer and physician, Nostradamus. In The Mask of Nostradamus, James Randi, a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant winner, writes the first in-depth interpretive biography of the man who some claim predicted such events as the Great Fire of London, the French Revolution, the rise of Napoleon and Hitler, even Watergate. His legendary work The Centuries, a unique book of prophecies, has captured multitudes of readers for more than four centuries.

Randi's research and analysis illuminate Nostradamus' historic origins, his bona fide role as a physician, what his amazingly ingenious prophecies forecast, the factual truth of his alleged prophetic successes, and how the rationalizations of Nostradamus' armies of followers have perpetuated his fame through the ages.

Renowned for his exposes of "New Age" charlatans, Randi explains how this cleverest of all astrologers flourished in hos own time. He shows how Nostradamus skillfully used ambigous phraseology and sometimes "predicted" events after their occurence. But Randi is more understanding of Nostradamus than implacably hostile, and drawing on recent research reveals how Nostradamus risked deat in the Inquisition for his genuine Protestant beliefs.