The Mammoth Book of Prophecies

This book offers an engaging survey of prophets and prophecies that will beguile believers, goad skeptics, and intrigue almost everyone else. While the prolific prophecies of the celebrated sixteenth-century French physician and astrologer Nostradamus stand at the center of this volume, they are preceded by the visions, prognostications, and revelations of the Old Testament prophets Isaiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel, of Islamic prophets, and the druidic Myrddin (who may appear in Arthurian legend as Merlin the Magician). Also examined are the powers of curses and the intuitions of police psychics like Robert Lees, who worked with Scotland Yard on the Jack the Ripper case. Also included are the predictions of the Brahan seer Kenneth Mackenzie and of Mother Shipton, the Yorkshire seer, who in the sixteenth century foresaw cars and e-mail, as well as the fire that leveled 436 acres of London a hundred years later. The final compelling chapters explore the many predictions and prophecies associated with three modern catastrophes: the sinking of the SS Titanic; the 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge in West Virginia and the disastrous attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, which apparently was described more than four centuries ago by Nostradamus.