Inventing Niagara
Beauty, Power, and Lies
$41.42
- Paperback
352 pages
- Release Date
5 May 2009
Summary
Americans call Niagara Falls a natural wonder, but the Falls aren’t very natural anymore. In fact, they are a study in artifice. Water diverted, riverbed reshaped, brink stabilized and landscape redesigned, the Falls are more a monument to man’s meddling than to nature’s strength. Held up as an example of something real, they are hemmed in with fakery – waxworks, haunted houses, IMAX films and ersatz Indian tales. A symbol of American manifest destiny, they are shared politely with Canada. Em…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781416546573 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 141654657X |
| Author: | Ginger Strand |
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
| Imprint: | Simon Spotlight Entertainment |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 352 |
| Release Date: | 5 May 2009 |
| Weight: | 383g |
| Dimensions: | 214mm x 140mm x 25mm |
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Critics Review
“Niagara Falls is where America discovered the sublime. And Ginger Strand has discovered everything that happened since. If you want to understand our relationship with the natural world, you better read this book.” – Bill McKibben, author of The Bill McKibben Reader
“Here we have two captivating stories – one about America’s most famous waterworks, and the other about how a self-proclaimed ‘hydrogeek’ schooled herself in the myths and meaning of the great falls. Displaying wit and verve on a scale worthy of her subject, Ginger Strand shows that Niagara has been harnessed, perhaps to a greater degree than any other of our natural wonders, to human purposes.” – Scott Russell Sanders, author of A Private History of Awe
“A brilliantly entertaining history of America’s original natural wonder and its heedless boosters and failed visionaries.” – Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz and Planet of Slums
“As engaging as it is insightful, Inventing Niagara is a careful and caring study of how myth and machine have covered over a great natural place. Peeling back the myths and looking behind the machines, as she brilliantly does, Strand reveals who we have been and who we need to become.” – Curtis White, author of The Spirit of Disobedience and The Middle Mind
“This is a deep and exhilarating book. Its material could have been played for irony, but Strand chose profundity instead, burrowing down through self-conscious layers of artifice until she arrives at a place both strange and vital.” – David Gessner, author of Soaring with Fidel
About The Author
Ginger Strand
Ginger Strand was raised in Texas, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Her fiction and essays have appeared in many places, including The Believer, The Iowa Review, The Gettysburg Review, and The Carolina Quarterly. She has been awarded fiction residencies by Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She lives in New York City.
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