Farenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

Quick review: Story follows a man in a future society where people have rejected books entirely and now spend their lives with radios in their ears or with large room sized interactive TV units. The job of 'fireman' has been changed to putting out fires to burning any books that are found. He secretly steals some books instead of burning them and has a breakdown in which he rejects his society and becomes a criminal.

Read this back in high school but not since. Remembered enjoying it, but wasn't overly thrilled about reading it again. There are segments of our society that think we're inches away from becoming a book burning fascist society and frankly I'm tired of them. (Related.) I was ready to point out that I can go to a couple of dozen bookstores in the metro area and buy just about anything I want to without fear of censorship or reprisal. That the only real censorship battles in this country have to do with school mandated book lists and/or age appropriate guidelines.
But the book surprised me in not being about censorship. I remembered the passages about burning books vividly, but the book suggests that it was because the public turned their backs on books, not because the state forbade them. In fact, the suggestion is that America became anti-intellectual and it's citizens increasingly isolated as they choose solitary enjoyments. Books were shunned because they disagreed with each other and were confusing. TV and magazines became bland out of fear that they would offend some segment of it's viewership. This led to a situation where people more and more blindly trusted the media until it became a huge societal baby-sitter. Fascism not with a bang, but with a diaper.
Are we on our way there now? I don't think so. Not in the slightest. Bookstores do booming business. Free speech rights are expanding (with exceptions). Media distrust is growing. I'd argue that our society continues to become more sophisticated and intellectual. My copy of the book has a blurb from the New York Times about scary elements of the book becoming more real today. Possibly, but I don't think that I-pods necessarily lead to totalitarianism.
But the book does deserve praise. It was the compass for the anti-censorship side and is in some (large?) way responsible for the idea that banning books is anti-American. Perhaps it was so successful that it kept us from going down a dark road. It's certainly a must read and well deserves to be thought of as great American literature.