| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 208 words from this article are provided below; about 412 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Mighty Niagara: One River—Two Frontiers. By John N. Jackson with John Burtniak and Gregory P. Stein. (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2003. 486 pp. $35.00, ISBN 1-57392-980-8.)
How do political boundaries that often ignore topography shape the development of particular regions? That question lies at the heart of The Mighty Niagara, a lengthy and detailed study by the geographer John N. Jackson, along with his associates John Burtniak and Gregory P. Stein. To answer the question they focus on the Niagara River, which defines part of the border between Canada and the United States. Though they are not the first scholars to wonder about this boundary—Beth LaDow's superb The Medicine Line (2001) has memorably and elegantly examined this border farther west—this book presents innumerable facts about the Niagara region. It succeeds as a reference work but is less useful as a work of analytical history.	1
As geographers, Jackson et al. are "concerned with the areal [sic] differentiation of the earth's surface as the home of man" (p. 21). They are particularly interested in contrasting developments on the two sides of the border. The boundary has always been permeable or "fluid" (p. 22), in their words, with traffic flowing back and forth for generations.	. . .

There are about 412 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.