just curious if anyone other thatn Wolfgang or some of our other German 'catters have read much of Karl May (pronounced My). He is known primarily as the author of stories of the American West, the Apache, Winetou, and his German friend, Old Shatterhand, but he also wrote many stories and novels about the Middle East, contrasting the Islamic and Western cultures in a way that may be very instructive to current events. Also, in the early part of the last century (1900s) he wrote a number of books intended to promote peace and written to discourage Franz Joseph from the path that led to the First World War. I would recommend to anyone that they read his 'Ardistan and Djinistan' a two volume work that relates the achievement of peace on earth between two traditionally antagonistic cultures, and how that was accomplished. His work is dated, to be sure, hard for him to foresee the end of monarchies and the later 20th c. 'God is Dead' movement, but well worth the read none the less. In fact, just to get people open to the idea, and talking about, how much work it requires to achieve peace, (real peace, not just the absence of war, something that must me worked for, not just awaited) and perhaps encourage them to work toward developing a cabinet level Department of Peace whose purpose would be to work for peace, would be worth reading them for. Anyone else read them? It is sad that most Americans have the notion that we of course must already possess all that is worthwhile culturally, while thousands of books, films, recordings, plays, etc. are produced worldwide that we will never even read about, let alone ever get to see or hear. I don't think that all of Karl May's 74 volume collected works have been translated into English as yet, if that project is still even being pursued. Too bad, we can learn much from other perspectives.