At the dawn of America's continental empire, James Fenimore Cooper, in the early 1800s, became the new nation's first major novelist, inaugurating a great period in American literature and bequeathing a number of classic texts including the "Leather-Stocking Tales". This companion to Cooper's writings appeals to school and college students by outlining Cooper's most frequently studied novels and establishing their historical backgrounds concerning American Indians and the early United States. Two opening chapters review the author's life and accomplishments, and another offers tips for managing Cooper's style and subject matter. Cooper's breakthrough novel "The Spy" (1821), which features George Washington as a major actor, has a chapter of its own. The second half of the Companion highlights the "Leather-Stocking Tales", with one chapter on the overall saga and five chapters devoted to the individual novels in the series: "The Deerslayer", "The Last of the Mohicans", "The Pathfinder", "The Pioneers", and "The Prairie". Altogether, this companion shares the spirit of adventure that made Cooper a pioneer of American Romantic literature and his writings a perennial source for ideas and images of Native America, the frontier, and the early USA.