A journal from his earliest years, this is a wistful, deeply nostalgic commentary on his earliest memories, his memories of going to church, encountering music (sometimes published as a separate work "On Music"), and his large family. It is openly theistic, romantic in style, and reminiscent of the Goethe-Schiller age in which the young Nietzsche grew up. In 1858, he wrote an addendum titled "looking back", which is included here. These journals were first published in the volume "Gesammelte Werke" edited by Peter Gast (a pseudonym for Heinrich Köselitz, a close associate of Nietzsche) and Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche (Nietzsche's sister). They were included in the second series of these collected works under the title "Philologica," which was published in 1897 and several editions after that. This was part of the effort to compile and publish Nietzsche's unpublished manuscripts and lecture notes after his death. This new 2024 translation from the original German manuscript contains a new Afterword by the translator, a timeline of Nietzsche's life and works, an index with descriptions of his core concepts and summaries of his complete body of works. This translation is designed to allow the armchair philosopher to engage deeply with Nietzsche's works without having to be a full-time Academic. The language is modern and clean, with simplified sentence structures and diction to make Nietzsche's complex language and arguments as accessible as possible. This Reader's Edition also contains extra material that amplifies the manuscript with autobiographical, historical and linguistic context. This provides the reader a holistic view of this very enigmatic philosopher as both an introduction and an exploration of Nietzsche's works; from his general understanding of his philosophic project to an exploration of the depths of his metaphysics and unique contributions.