Simon & Schuster</br></br>Product Description</br></br>Ray Bradbury??s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 is a masterwork of twentieth-century literature set in a bleak?? dystopian future.<BR><BR>Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world?? where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction?? firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities?? the printed book?? along with the houses in which they are hidden.<BR><BR>Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce?? returning each day to"nd life and wife?? Mildred?? who spends all day with her television ??family.?? But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor?? Clarisse?? who introduces him to a past where people didn??t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.<BR><BR>When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears?? Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home?? and when his pilfering is discovered?? the fireman has to run for his life.</br></br>Amazon.com Review</br></br>In <I>Fahrenheit 451</I>?? Ray Bradbury's classic?? frightening vision of the future?? firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good?? and knowledge and ideas are bad. Fire Captain Beatty explains it this way?? " contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy." <p>  Guy Montag is a book-burning fireman undergoing a crisis of faith. His wife spends all day with her television "family??"imploring Montag to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. Their dull?? empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbor Clarisse?? a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books?? and more interested in what she can see in the world around her than in the min