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This was a rough time in American history, with foreclosed homes lying empty (apocalyptic!), the recession forcing people to work in mind-numbing jobs (and act like zombies!) and the world creeped out by the threat of avian and swine flu (crazy death-causing plagues!) That's because zombies tapped into our zeitgeist. Remember in the late 2000s and early 2010s when literature and movies about the zombie apocalypse were everywhere? You couldn't swing a hatchet without chopping off an undead head. We can compare the success of The Last of the Mohicans to something more recent. Our main man Hawkeye was a cultural icon: a sort of James Bond/ John Wayne/ Don Draper.

So The Last of the Mohicans, which showcased the same emotions that Americans were feeling in 1826-Whoa, this continent is huge! It's dangerous and wild! We need survival skills!- caught on like wildfire. James Fenimore Cooper dropped this novel at the beginning of the second quarter of the 19th Century, when Americans were involved in moving westward and snatching as much of the unclaimed wilderness as they could get their grubby little hands on. It stars Hawkeye, a hyper-competent woodsman who combines attributes of European and Native American heritages and basically is the coolest guy ever. The Last of the Mohicans takes place in upstate New York in 1757 during the French and Indian War-a war that would, for all intents and purposes, prove more vital to shaping American identity than even ye olde Revolutionary War. It was crazy-popular.īut why? Why would a story about a bunch of (mostly) hapless white people traipsing around the wilderness of upstate New York with the help of some super-resourceful Native Americans be such a smash hit?

This book was like a cronut… if the America reading public were hungry New Yorkers circa 2013. This book was like literary catnip… if the American reading public were cats. If you were a bookworm in 1826, you would have seen one novel climb to the top of the early 19th Century equivalent of the NYTimes Bestseller list: The Last of the Mohicans.