"Inventing Niagara" Tells Unique History of Cultural Icon

My parents honeymooned at Niagara Falls in 1955.  I visited once in the early 1980s.  I've always thought of it as a natural attraction surrounded by lots of tourist traps in a region struggling with its post-industrial economic fate.   Ginger Strand's "Inventing Niagara:  Beauty, Power and Lies"  gave me a comprehensive tour, including the seventeenth-century discovery of the falls by LaSalle and Hennepin, treaties and conflict with Native Americans, early landownership, tourist development, hydro-power development, massive industrial contamination, and contemporary economic renewal efforts.

Today, Niagara Falls, while still beautiful and popular, is at the beck and call of hydro-power operators.  Half to three-quarters of the Niagara River is diverted for electrical power generation, but the falls have been rebuilt so that they still appear vigorous and full.  They are actually turned up each morning during the peak tourist season and turned down each night to capture more water to generate electricity.