The novel is about a future American society in which people are hedonistic (meaning they live only for pleasure), and reading is against the law because it makes them think. The main character, Guy Montag, has a job as a "fireman" (which, in this future, means "book burner"). The number "451" refers to the temperature (in Fahrenheit) at which the books burn when the "firemen" burn them "for the good of humanity". Written in the early years of the Cold War, the novel is a critique of what Bradbury saw as an increasingly dysfunctional American society.