 First edition | |
| Author | James Randi |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Charles Scribner's Sons (1990); Prometheus Books (1993) |
Publication date | 1990 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 256 |
| ISBN | 0-684-19056-7 |
| OCLC | 27034316 |
| 133.3/092 B | |
| LC Class | BF1815.N8 R35 1993 |
The Mask of Nostradamus: The Prophecies of the World's Most Famous Seer is a 1990 book by magician and skeptic James Randi. Randi provides an overview of the life and work of Nostradamus, a 16th-century French physician and astrologer who, in a series of quatrains in Les Prophéties, allegedly predicted several major historical events. Randi argues that Nostradamus was actually an exceptionally poor prognosticator who used vague and ambiguous language to give an illusion of authenticity. Randi further describes the widespread use of poor scholarship, mistranslations, and reference to forged prophecies by Nostradamus’s believers, and describes dubious methods that believers have used to obtain meaning from Nostradamus’s prophecies. Randi also provides an overview of the popularity and pseudoscientific nature of astrology, a technique that Nostradamus used to prepare prophecies, as well as providing an overview of other prophets and their methods. The book received generally positive reviews.