While Cooper had great initial success with his frontier romances, his polemic and political novels quickly changed critical reaction from positive to negative attacks. Cooper himself commented that his books would be attractive mainly to young boys, and for a long time, this was the case. Today, with a revival of interest in the West as a cultural heritage as well as a fantasy that promises dreams of freedom and excitement, Cooper's works have received renewed sympathetic critical attention. A discussion of the features and the reasons for the attractiveness of his frontier novels for the modern audiences will quickly lead to numerous discussion topics. For instance, why are modern readers so fascinated with the Western myth? The real West was much more harsh and less romantic. A comparison between historic reality and the fantasy of a West that never was reveals much about our modern...