Back in the pioneer days, there were buffalo, blizzards, and men struggling to scratch a living from the land. And although we don't often think about it when talking about the hardscrabble life on the plains, there were also books: almanacs, law books, guidebooks, schoolbooks and, yes, the occasional novel just for fun.

For a peek at reading back when Davy Crockett bagged his first raccoon, check out Richard W. Clement's Books on the Frontier: Print Culture in the American West ($29.95). Published by the Library of Congress, the volume makes use of the library's extensive collection of maps, photographs, songbooks, dime novels and other publications to detail publishing ventures in the new land.

It wasn't easy to bring reading material to the frontier. Clement discusses the travails of those who transported heavy printing presses hundreds of miles by river and land (consider the pack animal carrying a press that fell off a cliff!).

But if the book proves anything, it's that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Recounting the plight of a California printer who published the first local collection of poetry in 1865, only to be excoriated by writers upset their poems had been left out, Clement notes the printer's reaction: The controversy, said the man, "ought to make the volume sell."

Modern publishers everywhere salute his savvy.