“The Last of the Mohicans” is often dismissed as a boring old novel full of dense descriptions, epitomizing Mark Twain’s definition of a “classic” as “something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” Twain himself did not think much of its author, James Fenimore Cooper, whose “literary offenses” he lampooned in a famous essay. But Twain’s view is hardly impartial: As a great novelist himself, he needed a literary forebear to overthrow—and what better target than America’s first great novelist? Although it is not taught much in schools these days, “The Last of the Mohicans” is a magnificent adventure story, and its hero, Nathaniel “Natty” Bumppo, is arguably the most influential character in all of American literature….