This study was conceived and written as a unified book. Over the course of many drafts and revisions, I have presented and published different parts of this book so as to receive feedback from my colleagues and introduce its ideas into the field. I am especially grateful to the organizers of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society, the North American Nietzsche Society, and Nietzsche in New York, for their presentation opportunities and invitations, and I am indebted to the audiences at my talks for their helpful questions, comments, and suggestions. I would also like to express my gratitude to the University of Puget Sound for supporting my related conference travel and sabbatical research.

The following published essays are excerpted and modified versions of different parts of the draft version of this book, and I would like to thank the editors and publishers below for their permission to reproduce the shared material:

1. 1998. “The Moment of Tragic Death in Nietzsche's Dionysian Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence: An Exegesis of Aphorism 341 in The Gay Science,” International Studies in Philosophy 30: 131–143.

2. 2000. “The Conclusion of Nietzsche's Zarathustra,” International Studies in Philosophy 32: 137–152.

3. 2001. “Time, Power, and Superhumanity,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 21: 27–47.

4. 2002. “The Dwarf, the Dragon, and the Ring of Eternal Recurrence: A Wagnerian Key to the Riddle of Nietzsche's Zarathustra,” Nietzsche-Studien 31: 91–113.

5. 2004. “Zarathustra's Laughing Lions,” in Acampora, Christa Davis and Acampora, Ralph R. (eds.) 2004. A Nietzschean Bestiary: Becoming Animal Beyond Docile and Brutal. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 122–140.

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