Over the years, the novel has been subject to various interpretations, primarily focusing on the historical role of book burning in suppressing dissenting ideas. Bradbury has said that the novel is not about censorship; he says that "Fahrenheit 451" is a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature, which leads to people thinking that knowledge is made up of "factoids", partial information without context, such as Napoleon's birth date alone, without an indication of who he was.