Excellent!
The classic by James Fenimore Cooper...a classic portrait of the man of moral courage who severs all connections with a society whose values he can no longer accept.
Good story but typical of Cooper writings, long winded and often difficult to follow his intent.
Potrait of American frontier and friendship of two men of this era.. I was not able to get into this book.
A historical fiction masterpiece.
Cooper's classic novel...
A Wonderful Classic!!!!
1926 copy of this great classic.
I loved the book. Once you get past the nineteenth century prose, it's really a great story. It's a story of adventure and friendship, loyalty and revenge, of newly made bonds and loss.
This book is a hard read and quite frankly I'm shocked that it took me just under a week to get through it. The language--the prose is not for everyone. But I can see why this book has remained a favorite classic for well over a hundred years. I'm looking forward to tackling the rest of the Leatherstocking Tales...at a later date.
For those who are fans of the Michael Mann movie version of this story(of which I am one), this book is nothing like the film. Though it will always be on my top ten list of favorite movies, having read the book, I'm a bit perturbed at the changes Mann and the script writers made to the story. Clearly we all know the book is always better than the movie, and that some things must be omitted due to the timing and flow of a film. However, there were some changes that I think were unnecessary and I would like to have seen them on film. They really downplayed Chingachgook and Uncas' roles in the adventure, their relationship with each other and Hawkeye, and their status among the Indian people. Also they downplayed Duncan who wasn't really a douche in the novel as he was in the film. The love interests were portrayed all wrong, and frankly the movie was more of a love story than that of an adventure. Whereas the novel was more adventure and only vague mentions of romance. I've never seen any of the other versions of the film and have to wonder if they were more true to the novel. I suppose I mentioned this to warn anyone against reading this hoping it'll be a more fleshed-out version of the film. While the overall story basically remains the same, the journey, battles, rescues and some deaths are completely different.
But to those who are lovers over books, classics, or true stories of adventure and virtue, this is a must-read!
This book is a hard read and quite frankly I'm shocked that it took me just under a week to get through it. The language--the prose is not for everyone. But I can see why this book has remained a favorite classic for well over a hundred years. I'm looking forward to tackling the rest of the Leatherstocking Tales...at a later date.
For those who are fans of the Michael Mann movie version of this story(of which I am one), this book is nothing like the film. Though it will always be on my top ten list of favorite movies, having read the book, I'm a bit perturbed at the changes Mann and the script writers made to the story. Clearly we all know the book is always better than the movie, and that some things must be omitted due to the timing and flow of a film. However, there were some changes that I think were unnecessary and I would like to have seen them on film. They really downplayed Chingachgook and Uncas' roles in the adventure, their relationship with each other and Hawkeye, and their status among the Indian people. Also they downplayed Duncan who wasn't really a douche in the novel as he was in the film. The love interests were portrayed all wrong, and frankly the movie was more of a love story than that of an adventure. Whereas the novel was more adventure and only vague mentions of romance. I've never seen any of the other versions of the film and have to wonder if they were more true to the novel. I suppose I mentioned this to warn anyone against reading this hoping it'll be a more fleshed-out version of the film. While the overall story basically remains the same, the journey, battles, rescues and some deaths are completely different.
But to those who are lovers over books, classics, or true stories of adventure and virtue, this is a must-read!
James Fenimore Cooper\'s romantic adventure brings the wilds of the American frontier and the drama of the French-Indian War vividly to life. The most popular of Cooper\'s Leatherstocking Tales, The Last of the Mohicans portrays the inevitable conflict of opposed cultures and stands as a testament to the ways in which this struggle has been mythologized. Featuring the well-loved noble woodsman Natty Bumppo, or \"Hawk-eye,\" Cooper\'s novel is a memorable depiction of courage and passion, and a precursor to the Western genre.
Loved it better than the movie and I love the movie!
This was a facinating book. I was very much drawn into it and like it much more than the movie. I love the historical value of the book, and appreciate that the book was written shortly after the French and Indian war. Of course it is fiction, but it is interesting getting the author's perspective of times and events at that time.
The second and most popular chronicle in his Leather-stocking Tales, James Fenimore Coopers The Last of the Mohicans is one of the great historical romances to come out of America. Set in 1757 amidst the French and Indian War, the novel tells the story of frontier scout Hawkeye and his efforts to conduct two daughters of a fort commander to safety.
Sure, James Fennimore Cooper has no idea how many people can really fit in a birchbark canoe (he apparently thinks it's upwards of 8), and scenes seem to unfold in areas that are simultaneously claustrophobic and expansive, dark as a cave but light enough to read in, shrouded in waterfall mist but dry. People can emerge from ponds and have their pan and flash pistols work, and as Mark Twain famously notes, Cooper wears out barrels of moccasins using the 'step in the already trod prints so you don't leave a trail' trick.
It's also true Cooper couldn't write 'the dog died' in less than eighty words.
But you know what else? This book rocks. It's intense as the apocalypse, and sometimes his blunt imagery is breathtaking. Here's one of my favorite sentences, as our party has to camp where a massacre has occurred just a few days before, and where Cooper has explicitly told us animals have been feeding on the remains: "...long before the night had turned, they who lay in the bosom of the ruined work, seemed to slumber as heavily as the unconscious multitude whose bones were already beginning to bleach on the surrounding plain."
I mean-BAM! That's a home run.
And we owe this guy a debt of gratitude we can never repay for the rich prejudicial archetypes he blessed our western pulp fiction with...the 'good' noble savage, the 'sneaky' savage, the pure blonde maiden, the wise but doomed darker-haired (and in this book, mixed race - hey Cooper - the 21st century called - props!) sister, and of course Natty Bumpo/Leatherstocking/Hawkeye/le Longue Carabine, the long-haired American Robin Hood who lives outside society and can out-Indian the Indians. Would Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman have had Sully if Cooper hadn't given us Hawkeye?
It's also true Cooper couldn't write 'the dog died' in less than eighty words.
But you know what else? This book rocks. It's intense as the apocalypse, and sometimes his blunt imagery is breathtaking. Here's one of my favorite sentences, as our party has to camp where a massacre has occurred just a few days before, and where Cooper has explicitly told us animals have been feeding on the remains: "...long before the night had turned, they who lay in the bosom of the ruined work, seemed to slumber as heavily as the unconscious multitude whose bones were already beginning to bleach on the surrounding plain."
I mean-BAM! That's a home run.
And we owe this guy a debt of gratitude we can never repay for the rich prejudicial archetypes he blessed our western pulp fiction with...the 'good' noble savage, the 'sneaky' savage, the pure blonde maiden, the wise but doomed darker-haired (and in this book, mixed race - hey Cooper - the 21st century called - props!) sister, and of course Natty Bumpo/Leatherstocking/Hawkeye/le Longue Carabine, the long-haired American Robin Hood who lives outside society and can out-Indian the Indians. Would Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman have had Sully if Cooper hadn't given us Hawkeye?
