SOURCE: In a foreword and "In the Twentieth Century," in Nostradamus: The Man Who Saw through Time, Creative Age Press, 1941, pp. xi-xvi, 337-421.

In the following excerpt from a book published during the early years of World War II, McCann emphasizes Nostradamus's significance as a prophet of the world's current time of troubles and as a seer of the end of the age. The critic cites prophecies concerning the rise of Africa and Asia as dominant world powers and the subsequent "birth of a new age with a different type of thought and civilization."

The rich, actively fulfilled life of the French prophet, Michel de Nostradame, is the story of genius not only in its rarest but its most modern form. His ability foreshadowed a hope, now gaining a first hearing in this our day, that science may, in some not too remote tomorrow, discover principles of mental...