[1][2] The newspaper columns evolved into a book, which she wrote in about a month, and publisher Duell, Sloan and Pearce rushed it into print because of its wartime topicality.

[3] A revision ("the Cold War edition") was published in 1954, with Fisher revisiting her own text by way of "marginal notes, footnotes, and a section of additional recipes.

"[4] The revision "quietly spoke out against the over-indulgences of the postwar years,"[5] and included new material on feeding children, an experience that Fisher had not yet had when writing the first edition.

"[11] Fisher's biographer Joan Reardon wrote that the overarching theme of How to Cook a Wolf was "the will to survive, whether in wartime or in battle with old age or in a crise de nerfs  [fr].

"[13] Wolf may be the "best known"[14] of the 20-odd books produced by American food writer Fisher, whose writing has been described as "highly stylized" and so lyrical that she is "basically a Sappho.

"[14] In 1987, a San Francisco Bay Area writer named Cyna McFadden reported that Fisher had told her: "The book has some terrible recipes...We were just so grateful to get hold of anything.

"[23] During the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s, it was said that How to Cook a Wolf had been "almost a bible for modern commune dwellers, homesteaders, and other devotees of the simple life...referred to frequently in Mother Earth News and other underground publications.

[32] In 1958, Fisher appeared in a five-minute color short film produced by the Wine Advisory Board of San Francisco called "How to Cook a Wolf Quickly".