Its been a long time coming for this next person coming into The Territory. It’s hard to choose which one of his books to start with so I’ll just go with my favorite. His name is Friedrich Nietzsche and you’ve probably heard his name before. Nietzsche was a real interesting man who wrote books that changed the way people thought about things from then on and is considered to be the beginning of existentialism. Nietzsche was German born and raised and was so good at philosophy that the year after he graduated he was made the chair of the department he was a student of the semester before. He went on to travel and write books which he lived to see become very famous and influential. Everything went downhill after that though. He lived in the latter part of the 1800’s and was around for the first Nazi Reich which he hated and his sister whom he was close to actually MARRIED a Nazi. Nietzsche just about disowned her and then not too long after that he had a falling out with one of his dearest friends/quasi father figure named Ricard Wagner. Yes, the same Wagner that wrote operas and is responsible for the music that the helicopters played in Apocalypse Now. Wagner was an anti-Semite and Nietzsche broke with him due to it. Jeez I haven’t even hit the book yet. I’ve read every book Nietzsche wrote and like them all and each has a lot to teach. My favoriet of them though is called The Gay Science. TGS is probably his most fun and in my mind is best read when it’s warm out and you can go out walking around. Nietzsche reads better in the spring and summer rather than in the winter to me. TGS begins with a lot of pretty interesting poetry and ends with a collection of songs. Nietzsche was a music fanatic and talks a great deal about it in TGS. There is a zest about life in TGS that makes you want to go out and do that thing that you’ve been afraid or too timid to do. It involves a lot of one liners (of which Nietzsche was king along with Henny Youngman and Yogi Berra in my opinion) that makes it a pretty quick read. You can pick it up and read these really interesting quick thoughts and put the book down. I think that’s pretty cool. TGS is what spawned the very famous praise “God is Dead” which has, along with all of Nietzsche’s other works, been tragically misinterpreted and maligned. Nietzsche was a free thinker and had a mind keen to art and music. All of his books are worth the time but if you have to start somewhere, try The Gay Science.