Will to Power: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

"God is dead." "The Superman." "The Will to Power." "The Eternal Recurrence." Among shapers of contemporary thought—including Darwin, Marx, and Freud—Friedrich Nietzsche is perhaps the most mysterious and least understood. His aphorisms are widely quoted, but as both man and thinker he remains an enigmatic figure, "philosophizing with a hammer" and hurling unsettling challenges to some of our most cherished beliefs. Who was this eccentric German genius? This lonely and chronically ill, yet passionate, daring, and complex seeker? Was he a proto-Nazi, or would he have found Hitler despicable? Who was this man who caustically attacked the Christianity of his day but who wept openly when he saw a horse mistreated in the street? Why are his brilliant insights so relevant for today? How did he become the most misinterpreted and unfairly maligned intellectual figure of the last two centuries?