New Releases by James Fenimore Cooper

Featuring an appendix of discussion questions, the Diversion Classics edition is ideal for use in book groups and classrooms. Set during the French and Indian War, THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS follows frontiersman Hawkeye and his Mohican companions as they face violent kidnappers and treacherous enemies. It is at once a historical chronicle of a turbulent era and an exciting frontier adventure. Exploring military conflict and race relations, James Fenimore Cooper paints a poignant portrait of America during its formative years.

The travellers soon discovered the usual and unerring evidences that the several articles necessary to their situation were not far distant. A clear and gurgling spring burst out of the side of the declivity, and joining its waters to those of other similar little fountains in its vicinity, their united contributions formed a run, which was easily to be traced, for miles along the prairie, by the scattering foliage and verdure which occasionally grew within the influence of its moisture. Hither, then, the stranger held his way, eagerly followed by the willing teams, whose instinct gave them a prescience of refreshment and rest. On reaching what he deemed a suitable spot, the old man halted, and with an enquiring look, he seemed to demand if it possessed the needed conveniences. The leader of the emigrants cast his eyes, understandingly, about him, and examined the place with the keenness of one competent to judge of so nice a question, though in that dilatory and heavy manner, which rarely permitted him to betray precipitation. "Ay, this may do," he said, satisfied with his scrutiny; "boys, you have seen the last of the sun; be stirring." The young men manifested a characteristic obedience. The order, for such in tone and manner it was, in truth, was received with respect; but the utmost movement was the falling of an axe or two from the shoulder to the ground, while their owners continued to regard the place with listless and incurious eyes. In the mean time, the elder traveller, as if familiar with the nature of the impulses by which his children were governed, disencumbered himself of his pack and rifle, and, assisted by the man already mentioned as disposed to appeal so promptly to the rifle, he quietly proceeded to release the cattle from the gears. At length the eldest of the sons stepped heavily forward, and, without any apparent effort, he buried his axe to the eye, in the soft body of a cotton-wood tree. He stood, a moment, regarding the effect of the blow, with that sort of contempt with which a giant might be supposed to contemplate the puny resistance of a dwarf, and then flourishing the implement above his head, with the grace and dexterity with which a master of the art of offence would wield his nobler though less useful weapon, he quickly severed the trunk of the tree, bringing its tall top crashing to the earth in submission to his prowess. His companions regarded the operation with indolent curiosity, until they saw the prostrate trunk stretched on the ground, when, as if a signal for a general attack had been given, they advanced in a body to the work, and in a space of time, and with a neatness of execution that would have astonished an ignorant spectator, they stripped a small but suitable spot of its burden of forest, as effectually, and almost as promptly, as if a whirlwind had passed along the place. The stranger had been a silent but attentive observer of their progress. As tree after tree came whistling down, he cast his eyes upward at the vacancies they left in the heavens, with a melancholy gaze, and finally turned away, muttering to himself with a bitter smile, like one who disdained giving a more audible utterance to his discontent. Pressing through the group of active and busy children, who had already lighted a cheerful fire, the attention of the old man became next fixed on the movements of the leader of the emigrants and of his savage looking assistant.

The Last of the Mohicans is an epic novel by James Fenimore Cooper, first published in January 1826. It was one of the most popular English-language novels of its time, and helped establish Cooper as one of the first world-famous American writers. The story takes place in 1757 during the French and Indian War, when France and Great Britain battled for control of the American and Canadian colonies. During this war, the French often allied themselves with Native American tribes in order to gain an advantage over the British, with unpredictable and often tragic results. After the Cooper text comes Mark Twain''s caustic, funny, and damning "Fenimore Cooper''s Literary Offenses." Wherein Twain takes deadly aim at the casual manner in which Cooper wrote. Together for the first time these two classics are perfect counterpoints to one another.

James Fenimore Cooper''s The Last of the Mohicans is a historical novel taking place in 1757 during the French and Indian War as France and Great Britain battle for control of the North American colonies. The Last of the Mohicans was one of the most popular in English in its time, although critics identified narrative flaws. This volume includes the Mark Twain critical review Fenimore Cooper''s Literary Offenses. James Fenimore Cooper was a popular American writer whose historical romances of frontier and Indian life in the early American days created a unique form of American literature.

In this remarkable novel, the protagonist, white woodsman named Hawk-eye and his Mohican Indian companion Chingachgook join forces to help white military officer''s daughter through hostile territory. The story is set in colonial American background and states the conflict between French and English forces. The novel is illuminated by a number of exciting scenes of battle. Must read!

Illus. in black-and-white. This action-packed edition of James Fenimore Cooper''s famous adventure brings the wilds of the American frontier and the drama of the French and Indian War to vivid life.

Natty Bumppo, a young white hunter brought up in the Delaware Indian tribe, has to defend settlers before returning to the Iroquois who have allowed him parole.

With the publication of The Pathfinder in 1840, James Fenimore Cooper engaged in what he called the "hazardous experiment" of reviving one of his most popular characters who had been allowed to die in a previous novel. Natty Bumppo—who had appeared as Leatherstocking in The Pioneers, as Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans, and who had died as the Trapper in The Prairie—appears again as the hero of The Pathfinder. Encouraged by his British publisher to write another tale of the American frontier, Cooper revived his character to take him to the shores of Lake Ontario, the Inland Sea, for an adventurous story of sailors, Indians, and hunters. Inspired by his own experiences as a mid-shipman on Lake Ontario in 1808-09, Cooper writes in his most picturesque fashion of the wilderness of the Great Lakes, the Thousand Islands, and Niagara. "Never did the art of writing tread more closely upon the art of the painter," wrote Honoré de Balzac in his review of The Pathfinder. Cooper writes of places that were wilderness in his youth and that changed rapidly in his own lifetime as cities and commerce developed around the Great Lakes. Cooper''s attitude toward this development was ambivalent, as he indicated in his Preface: "That great results are intended to be produced by means of these wonderful changes, we firmly believe...but that they will prove to be of the precise results now so generally anticipated, in consulting the experience of the past, and taking the nature of man into account, the reflecting and intelligent may be permitted to doubt." The Pathfinder remains a classic and entertaining account of the American wilderness and of aspects of human experience in the New World.

Chingachgook and Uncas are the last living members of the great Mohican tribe. Hawkeye, a colonial scout, is their companion and loyal friend. In the midst of the French and Indian War, these three will risk everything to lead the two daughters of a British colonel to safety through the battle-torn northern wilderness. When the girls are captured by the vicious Huron tribe, Chingachgook, Uncas, and Hawkeye determine to do whatever they can to save them—no matter the cost.