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In Montaigne's Tower is an engaging collection of personal essays written in the discursive mode of Montaigne, the author's mentor and model. Masters, who is known for his distinctive use of memory to define the present moment, uses his own perceptions, experiences, and sensibilities to examine familiar subjects like politics, human sexuality, abandonment, family relations, and even death. His essays are not meant to advance a cause or prove a point, but rather to explore universal subjects in terms of his own life. Most of them deal in some way with his career as a self-made man of letters.Masters is an accomplished writer, and these essays, with their exact prose and narrative flow, reflect that. Most of them have appeared in such journals as the Ohio Review, New England Review, New Letters, and Sewanee Review. "Going to Cuba" was awarded the Monroe Spears prize as the best essay to appear in the Sewanee Review. "In Montaigne's Tower" and "Making It Up" were selected for Best Essays of 1998 and Best American Essays respectively.