Imagining Niagara: The Meaning and Making of Niagara Falls [Hardcover]

Patrick McGreevy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1994

The surprising connections between the Niagara people have imagined and the one they made

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

McGreevy (geography, Clarion State Univ.) analyzes Niagara Falls as a symbol and a creation of humankind. He focuses on four concepts--Niagara from afar, Niagara and death, nature and Niagara, and Niagara's future--showing how the falls have been viewed as a symbol for the power and mystery of nature. McGreevy believes this symbolism determined the development of the Niagara Falls area, creating in its wake such things as a religious shrine, a horror museum, and power plants. The author points out that some have fought to preserve the beauty of the area, while others have sought to use the power of the falls for commerical development. A thoughtful study that relies on numerous 19th-century writings, this work will appeal to informed lay readers and scholars.
- Linda McEwan, Elgin Community Coll . Lib., Ill.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Geographers are the most eclectic academics these days. Some, like cultural geographer McGreevy, are also among the most interesting. At a time when his colleagues in other disciplines are preaching the idea of cross-disciplinary research, he practices the thing itself admirably. Like a historian, he has researched three centuries of documents about Niagara Falls (he concentrates, however, on the nineteenth century). Like a sociologist, he searches for indications of the "accumulations" (by which he means daredevils, horror museum proprietors and patrons, honeymooners, Catholic pilgrims, tourists, suicides, and chemical industry personnel) near the site. Like a psychologically oriented literary critic, he interprets the falls' mutating role in the collective imaginations of those who have undergone arduous journeys to be in the presence of something that conventional wisdom deems beyond everyday life. In the collective images of the falls, McGreevy reads obsessions with remoteness, danger of death, nature, and the future. Perhaps his categories for these images are too vague to reveal much in themselves, but those that are actually illustrated fascinate, and all divulge cultural dynamics of what Kant so perspicaciously called the sublime. Roland Wulbert

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press (March 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0870239163
• ISBN-13: 978-0870239168
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,552,552 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent book; gets too academic in places, March 18, 2006

By 

M. Hammond (Buffalo NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Imagining Niagara: The Meaning and Making of Niagara Falls (Hardcover)

Living 40 minutes from Niagara Falls for the past 12 years, I was anxious to read more about the history of the Falls, and McGreevy's "Imagining Niagara" was my choice. Overall, it's a decent book and covers a great breadth of topics revolving around how the meaning of Niagara has changed over time (the "Editors Reviews" are very good in describing this more).

It did, however, get a bit too in-depth and academic multiple times for an average, casual reader. I would not immediately recommend this as a first book for someone wanting to learn about Niagara Falls.

That said, some parts were completely enthralling. It went into very well-written discussions and explanations on topics of general interest to anyone. The best way to summarize this (and this occurred to me over and over as I read this book) is that, if you paid good money to hire a tour guide to take you around the Falls, you would want your tour guide to have read this book. A tour guide with this kind of insight would provide a wonderful, deeply-felt, lasting impression of your visit, far beyond the already immense feelings the common visitor to the Falls takes away.

In summary, if you're planning to visit to Falls and want to take away an extraordinary appreciation of the Falls, read this book.