Ray Bradbury's internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 is a masterwork of 20th-century literature set in a bleak, dystopian future, narrated here by Academy Award-winning actor Tim Robbins. 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. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland 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. 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.
"Brilliant . . . Startling and ingenious . . . Mr. Bradbury's account of this insane world, which bears many alarming resemblances to our own, is fascinating."
The New York Times
"A masterpiece . . . A glorious American classic everyone should read: It's life-changing if you read it as a teen, and still stunning when you reread it as an adult."
The Boston Globe
"One of this country's most beloved writers . . . A great storyteller, sometimes even a mythmaker, a true American classic."
The Washington Post
Like many sci-fi authors, Bradbury predicted many of today's less admirable achievements, such as earbuds and huge TVs. So not surprisingly, this 1953 title is timeless. Penn Badgley, pleasant-voiced and convincing, is an outstanding narrator. His tone resonates with personality, and his subtle character shifts are effective, especially as he portrays this novel's antihero, a fireman whose job is
