Inventing Niagara : beauty, power, and lies

Review

Niagara Falls lives in the American imagination as both a natural wonder and a national symbol. But what is its real value? The spiritually ennobling view of its torrential emerald waters? Its ongoing role as a hydropower colossus? Its kitsch cache as a tourist and honeymooner destination? In this well-researched, surprisingly funny memoir-of-place, a driven Niagaraphile examines Niagara's troubling history and finds that the Niagara Falls we know today is not real at all.