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.

[1] Nostradamus is most famous for Les Prophéties, which contains the Centuries, a collection of 942 allegedly prophetic quatrains, and also contains an epistle to Henry II of France.

The Centuries in particular have garnered much interest up to the present day, and some of them have been retroactively interpreted to predict major events such as the death of Henry II of France, the flight and capture of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the Great Fire of London, the execution of Charles I of England, and the rise of Adolf Hitler.

Randi then provides an overview of other prophets who were contemporaries of Nostradamus, including John Dee, Cosimo Ruggeri, Mother Shipton, and Paracelsus.

Publishers Weekly praised Randi's "meticulous readings of key quatrains" that "make a potent case for his contention that the seer's alleged clairvoyant abilities rest on translators' embellishments, interpreters' excessive reliance on anagrams and 'hidden' names, distortions and wishful thinking", but also noted the book's "overkill in challenging all prophecy and the occult in general".

[5] In the Chicago Tribune, Peter Gorner described it as an "outstanding book, full and rich, a meticulous and thoughtful work of historical scholarship", also commenting positively on Randi’s placement of Nostradamus in context.

[7] Wendy Grossman, writing for New Scientist, praised Randi’s ability to provide "rational explanations" and show how Nostradamus’s quatrains have been distorted to derive meaning from them, but also criticised the book for not being "well structured".

In response, Randi defended his book, stating that Dean "makes unsupported accusations of purposeful omissions, prejudice, and a lack of scholarship on my part".

[10] Randi was also critical of Dean for devoting "some 40% of his review not to my book but to a curious statistical finding of two French psychologists, a matter in which I was not 'closely associated' as he chooses to state; I was not in any way involved with it.

"[10] Edward Chase, senior editor at Charles Scribner’s Sons, and Ed Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory, criticised the Los Angeles Times for allowing someone who believes in astrology to write a review of Randi’s book.

[13] In Robert Todd Carroll's The Skeptic's Dictionary, Randi is credited with debunking the notion that Nostradamus referenced Adolf Hitler in one of his quatrains.