Chef Fritz, a former captain in the US Army Medical Service Corps, continues to collect books in all fields of cookery in any language, but he especially seeks those dealing with disaster and wartime for both military and civilian cooks. Items from the Second World War in particular fuel his interest in rationed goods and the lack of ingredients formerly taken for granted, like spices from Japanese-occupied Pacific islands.

Since food and nutrition have long helped define war, blocs of war cooking books make incursions into nearly every library area: some crop up in the canning section, others in baking or in essays and biographies of chefs like August Escoffier and Alexis Soyer. Patriotic pamphlet titles—Delicious Desserts Every Day in Spite of Rationing, Conserves de Guerre, and Make the Most of Your Meat—maintain a permanent outpost in the Victus Populi.