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In celebration of Independent Bookstore Day, shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks from April 22nd-28th. Don’t miss out—purchases support your local bookstore!
Shop nowThe Last of the Mohicans
The Leatherstocking Tales: Book #1826
Narrator
Stefan Rudnicki
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Length
14 hours 36 minutes
Language
English
In 1757, the English and French are engaged in a savage, bloody war for control of the North American continent. Making tenuous, shifting alliances with various Indian tribes, the two European powers struggle to gain the upper hand on unfamiliar, forested battlegrounds.
Caught in the middle is Hawkeye, a white scout who was raised among the Indians. Not fully belonging to either world, he has retreated from society to live in the untamed woods of upstate New York. By his side are Chingachgook and the young Uncas, last of the vanishing race of Mohicans. Together, the three embody a code of moral courage, self-sufficiency, and loyalty, and share a deep trust and friendship.
Cora and Alice Munro, the daughters of an English commander, are on their way to join their father. Escorting them through the alien wilderness are Alice's fianc├®, Major Duncan Heyward, and the treacherous Huron warrior Magua, whose attraction to Cora and hatred for whites make him a vengeful, insidious enemy.
When Magua betrays his party to the Iroquois, it is up to Hawkeye and his band to rescue the beautiful sisters and escort them through hostile Indian country. Through a series of heroic fights, escapes, and adventures, bonds are deepened, lives are lost, and the danger heightens, building toward an epic showdown.
Written in 1826, The Last of the Mohicans was one of the first great novels of American literature and one that has consistently captured the imagination of generations of readers. It established a mythic image of the American frontier as a setting for thrilling adventures and introduced such archetypes as the "noble savage", embodied by Chingachgook, and the rugged and honorable frontier hero, embodied by Hawkeye.
James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) was America's first successful popular novelist. Son of the prominent federalist William Cooper, founder of the Cooperstown settlement, James was educated at Yale in preparation for a genteel life as a federalist gentleman. After his father's death in an 1809 duel, Cooper quickly squandered his inheritance, and at thirty was on the verge of bankruptcy. He decided to try his hand at writing. His first novel, Precaution, a domestic comedy set in England, lost money, but Cooper had discovered his vocation. Cooper established his reputation after his second novel, The Spy, and in his third book, the autobiographical Pioneers, Cooper introduced the character of Natty Bumppo, a uniquely American personification of rugged individualism and the pioneer spirit. A second book featuring Bumppo, The Last of the Mohicans, quickly became the most widely read work of the day, solidifying Cooper's popularity in the United States and in Europe. Cooper was a prolific writer, publishing thirty-two novels, twelve works of nonfiction, one play, and numerous pamphlets and articles. His most lasting contributions to American literature were his five books about Natty Bumppo. Later anthologized as The Leatherstocking Tales, they are best read in the order in which they were written: The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, The Prairie, The Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer.
Stefan Rudnicki is an avid audiobook narrator, receiving numerous Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine. He is also a Grammy-winning audiobook producer.
Reviews
“The book that gave birth to the genre. Like so many later Westerns, Cooper’s story is a sentimental yarn about a frontier already lost—that of upstate New York in the mid eighteenth century. From its first pages, Mohicans sweeps readers into a chase narrative in which woods-wise men come to the rescue of damsels in distress. A love story ensues that was too racy even for Daniel Day-Lewis in the 1992 screen adaptation of this long-beloved novel.”
“[Cooper's] sympathy is large, and his humor is as genuine—and as perfectly unaffected—as his art.”
“[Cooper’s] worldwide fame attests his power of invention, for his novels have been popular principally for their variety of dramatic incidents…but…[there has been] a revival of interest in their creation of tension between different kinds of society…between civil law and natural rights as these suggest issues of moral and mythic import.”
“The beauty of the unspoiled wilderness and sorrow at its disappearance, symbolized in Hawkeye’s Mohican Indian friends, the last of their tribe, are important themes of the novel.”
“This novel remains the most popular of Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, a classic story of the French and Indian War. The battles and exciting pursuits, which constitute the book’s plot, are rounded out by interesting Indian lore and descriptions of the wilderness.”
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