1)  What sense do you get of the author from the beginning?  Compare the authorial/narrative voices in Boone and Bartram to Cooper’s.

2)  What do you take to be her purpose(s) in this book?

3)  Compare Cooper’s discussion of loons on page 4 with Thoreau’s in the following passage:
 

4)  How much of this book is based on personal observation?  What other sources does Cooper use? To what effect?

5)  Consider Cooper’s discussion of maple sugar.  What different aspects of it does she cover?  What does she want her reader to know about it?  Why?

6)  Compare Cooper’s methods with Bartram’s.  What sort of experience is she chronicling?  What is her subject?  Who is she writing for, do you suppose?

7)  Compare Cooper and Bartram’s treatments of God.   His might be characterized as "sublime"--seeing God in the splendor and majesty of nature.  What about hers?

8)  How does Cooper place the landscape she observes in history?  What changes does she mention?

9)  I am e-mailing you two brief passages from the "Summer" section of Cooper’s book.
How do they add to and/or change your view of Cooper’s work?