By BOB HOOVER, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Times are tough and will get tougher, especially for government-funded programs after the latest bout of budget chopping and chest-thumping in Washington.

The demographers are in charge now, ordering us to line up in the appropriate groups so that we make better targets for advertisers, marketers, politicians and the medical industry.

"Autobiography of Mark Twain: Vol. 1"

Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith and other editors of the Mark Twain Project

University of California Press ($34.95)

It seems everybody talks about "Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1," but nobody reads all of it, except Twain scholars.

Thanksgiving gives permission to let our inner master chef blossom by making more elaborate things to eat, including home-baked breads and desserts.

Here's a recipe for delicious rolls that are a cut above the store-bought variety and just as convenient because they can be mixed a day ahead by refrigerating the dough at several stages.

CRUSTY DINNER ROLLS

Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it.

-- "Macbeth"

Early in the morning of April 21, 1910, astronomers at Harvard University sighted Halley's comet making its return to Earth's skies after nearly 75 years. Across New England in Redding, Conn., at his estate, Stormfield, Mark Twain faced the last day of his life.

It takes a village to keep a community of souls together, goes the common thinking, and examples are everywhere. Pleasant places for industrious, law-abiding folks.

There are other villages in America as well that are not so pleasant -- the internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II, for instance.

"FLANNERY: A LIFE OF FLANNERY O'CONNOR." By Brad Gooch. (Little, Brown; $30)

In his book, "God and the American Writer," Alfred Kazin chooses Nathaniel Hawthorne as his starting point to examine the struggles with the angel that occupied so many American writers.

"A. LINCOLN: A BIOGRAPHY." By Ronald C. White Jr. (Random House; $35)

The contrast between the two inaugurals of Abraham Lincoln illustrates the story of the four terrible years that separated them.

"He said he felt like a little boy who had stubbed his toe in the dark. He said that he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh." -- Adlai Stevenson, quoting Abraham Lincoln, after losing the presidential election to Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.