THE LEATHERSTOCKING SAGA, by James Fenimore Cooper, edited by Allan Nevins (833 pp.; Pantheon; $8.50). In a heroic effort to save one of his favorite authors from the oblivion of an unread classic. Columbia University's versatile Historian Allan Nevins has undertaken to streamline Fenimore Cooper for moderns. A lifelong Cooper fan who played make-believe Deerslayer as an Illinois farmboy, Nevins has taken the five Leatherstocking talesThe Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers and The Prairieshorn away the interminable love passages and faded humor, deftly stitched the rest together to...
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