n my hands I hold a book about Nostradamus, the sixteenth-century French mystic whose predictions of epic calamities have fascinated generations, and whose stanza "From poor people a child will be born/ who with his tongue will seduce many people" has been interpreted as prophesying the rise of Adolf Hitler. Printed on high-acid paper, this volume, with its 137 brittle, crumbling pages, bears a publication date of 1921 but feels centuries older. The book promises to "decypher and reveal for the first time the prophesies on the future of Europe and the rise and fall of France from 1555 to 2200." Its final pages offer additional mystical edification in a series of advertisements for related texts: Memoirs of a Spiritualist, The Wandering Soul, How Can I Protect Myself From Suggestion and Hypnosis?, Soul and Cosmos, The Realm of the Invisible, and Human Destiny and the Course of the Stars. Pasted inside this moldering volume is one of Adolf Hitler's bookplates.