The Leatherstocking Saga (Modern Library Giant, #G 94)

"Chingachgook, Uncas, and Leatherstocking are Cooper's supreme achievement, and one of the principal glories of American literature. Leatherestocking in particular is, as Thackeray wrote, one of the great prize men of world fiction .... "It was Cooper's felicity to unroll a canvas whose panoramic width matched the shaggy continent; to paint on it the pageant of the primeval Atlantic forests, the Great Lakes, the smaller canoe-threaded waterways and the rolling prairies; and to fill the foreground with clangorous action of the era when Indian, Briton, Frenchman and Spaniard disputed the destiny of the continent .... "Those who take the pains to read the five novels attentively, taking them into proper succession from Deerslayer's awkward youth to the trapper's mellow old age, will find that they have read nothing less than the nearest approach yet made to an American epic."