Niagara: A History of the Falls

Anthony Trollope’s mother wept at the sight of it; Charles Dickens saw God in its rushing waters; and Harriet Beecher Stowe became so “maddened” by its beauty she contemplated flinging herself into the cascade. Few natural wonders have inspired the passions and the imaginations of so many as Niagara Falls, whose sublime beauty and awesome power have made it a magnet for statesmen and stuntmen, poets and poseurs, ordinary sightseers and exceptional visionaries. Popular historian Pierre Berton traces the history and allure of one of America’s great natural phenomena. As Thurston Clarke noted in his front page New York Times Book Review , Berton “makes a serious and convincing case for Niagara’s pivotal role in North American history…. His Niagara is a lodestar for North American culture and site of the first railway suspension bridge, inspiration for Nikola Tesla’s discovery of the principle of alternating current, and the subject of Frederic Church’s most celebrated landscape; a natural wonder that has bewitched generations of scientists, authors, and utopians, and stimulated innovations and social movements still casting long shadows.”