Ninth in a series. James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) was an American writer who chronicled rural life from the Revolution through the first half of the 19th century. I am not a literary critic and would not pretend to evaluate the literary merit of his novels, but to be honest I didn’t enjoy reading them, yet I read them and learned very much from them, and I judge them to be an indispensable record of the life of the Mind in America. His characters may be flawed; they come across as types rather than as pe … (read more)
