>> it's the americanÑi iliad.elby foote. >> charlie: he's the american homer. >> that's exactlyÑi right. you connected the dot. just can't keep them down. you know, he wrote 1.5 million words about the war. it started out as bennett search, the great random house chiefton asked him to do a brief project for the end of the war 1954. it was going to be 18 months to. 19 years later and 1.5 million given, longer than decline and fall, you have this remarkable novelistic treatment of the war that i think is the best account of.sdv what it must have felt like to have fought. >> charlie: that was his seen just. he took you to the battle feed. >> it was the smell of the gunpowder, it was the food they had to eat, it was the weather on the battle fields. >> charlie: you also suggest that he was sort of the four runner of the new journalism. >> i tnk he' uncdite author of it, i do. tom wolf, obviously much much more prominent that that. he was the first big novelist to write big non-fiction in our time. there are issues wit

and going to school and so forth, and he brought home spanish translations of the odyssey and the iliad and he put them on the table and he said to me, "mijo, study them in the original spanish." >> hinojosa: oh, my god. >> i'm telling you, that's a true chauvinist. even greek was originally spanish. >> hinojosa: so your first book, into the wire, actually you had written that book and you got rejected for ten years? >> ten years, yeah. >> hinojosa: when i read that, i just was like, "wow, you got rejected by publishers for ten years and you kept it as a manuscript, trying to sell it." >> yeah. >> hinojosa: and it becomes a best-seller; it gets a great, great review in the new york times. it's about the border. you write some other books along the way. you write an amazing memoire that also is nominated for an american book award? >> got the american book award. >> hinojosa: got the american book award. but a lot of people, again, know you as the writer who brought to forth this story of the yuma 14? >> yes, right. >> hinojosa: just so people can remember, that was the really horrific s

think of the homeric poems, the "iliad" and the "odyssey." the homeric singers could produce thousands of lines of poetry out of their own memory. we're not good at that anymore, because print took it away. is it a loss? sure. and to a certain extent, getting people to be contemplative and a little bit slower, not to multitask all the time, paying avid attention over a long period of time, to a certain extent, might be lost. but that's the price of gain. >> dretzin: do you struggle with the issue of distraction, personally? >> i don't know anyone on the planet who doesn't struggle with the issue of distraction, personally. you get pulled in every direction today. but this is not a new issue. go back and read descriptions of the progressive era, walking down the streets in new york, and the sense of your eyes being pulled in every direction by the hubbub of the crowd. people described it as being, like, electrocuted, you know, bolts of energy shooting through you from every direction. people as early as the 1960s were telling us we were moving

aarp's consolidated 990 but in the audit process, each auditor audits separately the books of each of iliadnd for purposes of consolidated reporting. i would be interested in looking at the elements of each consolidated financial statement controls. >> hopefully could you give me the rest of the list? you looked through the report you have before you. i am sure you had time to look at it. >> not much. >> the committee called on monday and i read it tuesday and prepared my statement tuesday night. >> from what you heard today the report, you had time to look at even briefly. would you agree that there is some interest that should be followed up? .. >> is an unusual element. i have never seen in the context of profit or nonprofit affiliates a grantor trust playing such a key role. >> mr. chairman, i yield back. >> the gentleman yield back. the gentleman from oregon, mr. blumenauer, is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i guess i would just posit for just a moment that aarp does a whole range of activities that are not a part of their foundation. this is the revenue strea