Can anyone predict the future? Meet twelve mind-boggling personalities who seemed to know how. Among them The ancient Maya, who invented a remarkably accurate calendar that gave a date for the end of the December 21, 2012. Leonardo da Vinci, the great artist, who drew detailed sketches of tanks, machine guns, and helicopters...four centuries before they were invented. Nostradumus, the sixteenth-century French doctor whose amazing predictions included the rise of Adolf Hitler. Jeane Dixon, a wealthy socialite who, on November 22, 1963, looked into her lunch of eggs florentine and announced, "Something dreadful is going to happen to the president today." Did they always get it right? How did they know? Were they psychic? Or did they simply combine knowledge, sensitivity, inspiration, and some good old-fashioned luck to see into the unknown? Kathleen Krull and Kyrsten Brooker's entertaining and enlightening book may just hold the answers to these and other fascinating questions.