Fahrenheit 451

by Ray Bradbury

Guy Montag is a fireman who lives in a time when people enjoy mindless entertainment and state authority controls the spread of knowledge.  However, his job is not to put out flames but to extinguish rebellion by burning books.  The government has the firemen punish suspected book carriers for fear that ideas would get out that contradict what authority tells the people to think.
After a chance meeting with young Clarisse, a starry-eyed girl who prefers reading and meaningful experiences to the cheap and violent car crash sideshows her peers enjoy, Montag begins to think that the world he grew up with is misguided.  Will he stand against the governmental authority and all that he has ever known?