Ray Douglas Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, IL. He was an actor,
playwright, and author of short-stories and books of fantasy, science fiction, horror,
mystery, nonfiction, and realistic fiction. He has written more than ten novels and
hundreds of short stories.
Fahrenheit 451 was published in 1953. The story is set in America some time in the future.
Books are outlawed. Any book that is found is burned. Guy Montag, who used to have a
job burning books, decides he has had enough and instead wants to preserve the knowledge
contained in books. Fahrenheit 451 won the Commonwealth Club of California Gold
Medal and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature in 1954. The
New York Times called it "[b]rilliant . . . startling and ingenious . . . Mr. Bradbury's account
of this insane world, which bears many alarming resemblances to our own is fascinating."