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I have not read this book completely. In fact as far as I am certain, I have only read one chapter, that quite recently: chapter 6, “The Discovery of the Will to Power��.

Despite this, I have no doubt that the book deserves the rating I’ve given it, with no qualifications.

I will admit that I don’t know if Kaufmann has been superseded by someone else in the “Nietzsche scholarship�� field over the last couple decades. This book first appeared in 1950, so it’s not recent by any means. But with three other editions appearing (1956, 1968 and 1974) there’s no doubt about the popularity of the book, which extends to both students and the reading public I’m sure. The fourth edition is still in print.

I’m going to do something that better reviewers than I would never stoop to, and that’s quote “publicity�� for the book. The first quote is from the publisher (presumably) as it appears on Amazom no less.

This classic is the benchmark against which all modern books about Nietzsche are measured. When Walter Kaufmann wrote it in the immediate aftermath of World War II, most scholars outside Germany viewed Nietzsche as part madman, part proto-Nazi, and almost wholly unphilosophical. Kaufmann rehabilitated Nietzsche nearly single-handedly, presenting his works as one of the great achievements of Western philosophy.
Responding to the powerful myths and countermyths that had sprung up around Nietzsche, Kaufmann offered a patient, evenhanded account of his life and works, and of the uses and abuses to which subsequent generations had put his ideas. Without ignoring or downplaying the ugliness of many of Nietzsche's proclamations, he set them in the context of his work as a whole and of the counterexamples yielded by a responsible reading of his books. More positively, he presented Nietzsche's ideas about power as one of the great accomplishments of modern philosophy, arguing that his conception of the "will to power" was not a crude apology for ruthless self-assertion but must be linked to Nietzsche's equally profound ideas about sublimation. He also presented Nietzsche as a pioneer of modern psychology and argued that a key to understanding his overall philosophy is to see it as a reaction against Christianity.
Many scholars in the past half century have taken issue with some of Kaufmann's interpretations, but the book ranks as one of the most influential accounts ever written of any major Western thinker.

And more publicity, some of the blurbs from the back cover (chosen to impress Goodreaders).

Thomas Mann: “A work of great superiority over everything previously achieved in Nietzsche criticism and interpretation.��

A.J.P. Taylor: “This is the most sensible exposition of Nietzsche’s philosophy ever made��

Jacques Maritain: “An important historical and philosophical contribution. Mr. Kaufmann’s analysis of Nietzsche’s life, thought, and influence is extremely well-informed, thorough, and searching, and rids us of many interpretations due to popularized Nietzscheanism. Indispensable for anyone concerned with Nietzsche.��

All right, why have I done this? I’m not trying to sell the book. I am suggesting that unless there’s some reason to doubt the veracity or honesty of these “blurbs��, they are worth thinking about. (The publisher, by the way, is Princeton U.P.)

Okay, let’s hear from the author

Kaufmann’s Preface to the First Edition (1950) could be quoted in its entirety, it’s that interesting. But it’s four pages long, so I won’t do that. Instead I’ve decided to just quote the first paragraph, and something from near the end.

Nietzsche, more than any other philosopher of the past hundred years, represents a major historical event. His ideas are of concern not only to the members of one nation or community, nor alone to philosophers, but to men everywhere, and they have had repercussions in recent history and literature as well as in psychology and religious thought. Yet Nietzsche’s way of writing �� his reputation as a great stylist notwithstanding �� and the excessive freedom of most translations of his work make it difficult for the contemporary reader to find out what Nietzsche himself stood for. One knows of his anticipation of psychoanalysis, of his decisive influence on Spengler and existentialism, and of the problem posed by his relations to the Nazis; but the details remain something of a mystery, and Nietzsche’s thought has been obscured rather than revealed by its impact.

and

�� one is bound to be asked what prompted the choice of the man to whom one devotes such a study �� First, there is the scholar’s interest in correcting what he takes to be misapprehensions. Then certain aspects of Nietzsche’s critique of modern man deserve serious consideration: ever more people seem to realize that their pleasures do not add up to happiness and that their ends do not give their lives any lasting meaning. Properly understood, Nietzsche’s conception of power may represent one of the few great philosophic ideas of all time �� (and) what is admirable is his deprecation of the importance of agreement and his Socratic renunciation of any effort to stifle independent thinking. Without acceding to his philosophy, one may respect his overruling passion for intellectual integrity; and his protestant perspectives are often suggestive and fruitful even when they are unacceptable.

And what about the reviewer?

The reason I took this off the shelf and read part of it was that I read, in another book, something else about Nietzsche’s views on the will to power that disturbed me. I didn’t remember what was being claimed about this from my own reading of Nietzsche 40-50 years ago.

The chapter I read is a study of the development of the idea of power in Nietzsche’s thinking (Nietzsche used the concept of power long before ever using the term will to power, which Kaufmann tells us first appears in Also Sprach Zarathustra. In Kaufmann’s translation of Zarathustra (in The Portable Nietzsche), (view spoiler)[I had the book as The Potable Nietzsche until I corrected it 9/14/15 ... a rather grotesque typo! (hide spoiler)] the phrase is introduced in I.15 (On the Thousand and One Goals), appears seven times in II.12 (On Self-Overcoming), and “once more�� without being specified by Kaufmann (the reviewed book, p. 200). These are the only places Kaufmann finds the phrase up to and including Zarathustra. In the latter work, Kaufmann characterizes the phrase as meaning “the will to overcome oneself��.

ASIDE(view spoiler)[
(As an aside, Kaufmann says that Nietzsche “prized (Zarathustra ) more than anything else he wrote��. After this work, published in four parts in the years 1883-1885, Nietzsche published the following:

Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
On the Genealogy of Morals (1887)
The Case Wagner (1888)
The Twilight of the Idols (1889)

In January of 1889 Nietzsche suffered a mental collapse. He never again enjoyed a prolonged period of mental stability. In 1893 his sister took control of his remaining works and their publication.

In 1895, both The Antichrist and Nietzsche Contra Wagner were published
In 1908, Ecce Homo appeared

The Will to Power is not really one of Nietzsche’s works, “but rather a posthumously published selection from his notebooks��.

This publication information is presented (and explained more fully) on pages 484-486 of the reviewed book.) (hide spoiler)]

It is only in the next section of the book (Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Power) that Kaufmann delves deeply into the further development of this idea in Nietzsche’s later writings, and attempts to explicate it as it relates to other themes in Nietzsche’s works. (The titles of the chapters in this section include “Morality and Sublimation��, “Sublimation, Geist, and Eros��, “Power versus Pleasure��, “The Master Race��, and “Overman and Eternal Recurrence��.) However, since I haven’t read this material, and am not going to right now, I can’t comment further.

To summarize what I took away from the part of this book that I’ve looked at, it is easy to take away facile and incorrect impressions of Nietzsche’s thoughts from a casual reading of bits and pieces of his works. But Kaufmann values Nietzsche very highly, and obviously thinks he is one of the great thinkers of nineteenth century philosophy.

For anyone with a deep interest in Nietzsche I would recommend this book very highly. You may come away with disagreements about some of Kaufmann’s conclusions, but your understanding of Nietzsche’s views will almost certainly, on balance, be deepened.