Cooper's Leather-Stocking Novels

James Fenimore Cooper''s Leather-Stocking tales, published between 1823 and 1841, are generally regarded as America''s first major works of fiction. Here, Geoffrey Rans provides not simply a new reading of the five novels that comprise the series but also a new way of reading them.

Rans analyzes each of the five novels (The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, The Prairie, The Pathfinder, and The D...