After the disheartening failure of her first vegetarian cookbook, released into a crowded marketplace full of competing big names and slick presentations, Melody decided to try another strategy. As a former history undergraduate before turning to anthropology, it was one that she was well-suited for.

Melody conducted deep and thorough historical research, corresponding with foreign scholars, reviving scans of faded and brittle documents from overseas archives, and reading through book after book after book. Her patience was rewarded with a bevy of official pamphlets, menus, and recipes detailing the vegetarian dishes served at the behest of a major world leader. From there it was a simple matter to devise cooking schemes, guess ingredient lists, and prepare substitution tables for vegan and diabetic readers.

The major world leader? Adolf Hitler, der Fuhrer himself.

The press moaned and swooned over Melody’s The Hitler Vegetarian Cookbook . People chatted about it on national TV, threatened boycotts, publicly and loudly wondered why a card-carrying member of the Green Party would produce such a fascist product.

The cookbook stayed on the bestseller lists nationwide for six months. If Melody had learned any lesson from anthropology, it was that infamy would sell as well as fame in a pinch.

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