NIAGARA FALLS
by Leonard Everett Fisher & illustrated by Leonard Everett Fisher
In an account published in 1683, the first European to write about Niagara Falls, Father Louis Hennepin of France, called it a ``Waterfall, which has no equal.'' Fisher (William Tell, 1996, etc.) creates a readable, humorous history of the falls from the 1500s, when the Seneca tribe controlled the area around it, to the times, past and present, when it has been a popular tourist attraction (``There I stood, and humbly scanned/The miracle that sense appals,/And I watched the tourists stand/Spitting in Niagara Falls''—Morris Bishop) and a great natural source of water power. Fisher's inclusion of the death-defying stunts (from walking a tightrope over the falls to plunging over them in barrels) by daredevils seeking fame and fortune is sure to entertain readers. (b&w photos and reproductions, map, index.) (Nonfiction. 8-12)