Immediately after World War I, four major European and American poets and thinkers--W. B. Yeats, Robinson Jeffers, R. M. Rilke, and C. G. Jung--moved into towers as their principal habitations. Taking this striking coincidence as its starting point, this book sets out to locate modern turriphilia in its cultural context and to explore the biographical circumstances that motivated the four writers to choose their unusual retreats. From the ziggurats...