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Comte de St.-Germain wrote:

Sophie's World is an excellent intro to philosophy.

Doesn't have Nietzsche. That said, it's better to not have him then to discuss him like Bertrand Wooster.

A great test of a philosophy intro is to see what they say about Nietzsche: 50 Philosophical Ideas You Need to Know has two Nietzsche entries, both about Nazism. Shit book.

katja z wrote:
And often tediously long too ... but you still have to trawl through the whole of it in order to find the relevant sentence, don't you?

An intro will probably tell you enough to at least let you know what they were talking about, and probably a bastardized version of what they said, but enough to let you know if you're interested enough to bother.

Re Nietzsche, which of his texts would you recommend for a start? I've only read bits and pieces, and nothing from start to finish. (Unlike The Black Jester I've never felt particularly drawn to him; it might be useful to have some first-hand idea about his writings, but I don't have the time and energy to read everything.)

Birth of Tragedy is a good intro I think, it's quite focussed, it's his first book, and it deals with stuff that you probably won't need to do a tonne of research on, especially since he later criticised it as a kind of naive attempt at philosophy.
Still a great book though.