Thanks for having the integrity to own up to an overreaction in setting up the thread in the first place, stevenlmeyer.

But marks deducted, I'm afraid, for the somewhat churlish addendum.

>>Random House is a subsidiary of a German company, Bertelsmann AG. Was it the German head office that pressured the American subsidiary into ditching "The Jewel of Medina?" European companies tend to display more fear of Islam than American ones.<<

Possible, I suppose, but highly unlikely.

In my experience, American subsidiaries take not a blind bit of notice of their European head office, and take instead great delight in contradicting, upstaging and generally annoying the cr4p out of them at every opportunity.