Why Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 Is a Great Book

     On numerous occasions, Mortimer Adler wrote about the criteria that was used to determine which books of all the books written in the West would be placed within The Great Books of the Western World.  Contrary to confusion and many misstatements I've read over the years, Adler says it was essentially three criteria and they are as follows:

1) Contemporary significance - Even though historically valuable, these works address “issues, problems, or facets of human life that are of major concern to us today as well as at the time in which they were written.”

Numerous critical reviews exist regarding Fahrenheit 451. One testament to its value is that it has been in print since 1953 and annually sells more than 50,000 copies. Many of the themes (and there are many) explored within the novel are timeless in their nature.
2) Rereadability - These are books “intended for the general reader that are worth reading carefully many times or studying over and over again...indefinitely rereadable for pleasure and profit.”
As I have confessed before in blogs and lectures, I have read Fahrenheit 451 over 30 times in the past several years. In truth, this work is rich in content and form and has enough thematic substance to sustain numerous readings and an enriching conversation. Most importantly is that all evidence points to the reality that this work is the most read, discussed, and researched work by Ray Bradbury, but it is the most universally misinterpreted.
3) Relevance- There is extensive relevance and something of significance to say about a large number of the 102 great ideas of the thinking and writing done by the authors chosen.
Of the 102 Great Ideas Adler explored, Fahrenheit 451 touches upon or explores in a meaningful manner the following: Beauty, Being, Cause, Chance, Change, Citizen, Courage, Custom and Convention, Desire, Duty, Emotion, Experience, Family, Fate, God, Good and Evil, Habit, Happiness, Honor, Judgment, Knowledge, Law, Life and Death, Love, Man, Memory and Imagination, Mind, Nature, Opinion, Opposition, Philosophy, Pleasure and Pain, Prudence, Punishment, Reasoning, Relation, Religion, Senses, Sign and Symbol, Sin, Soul, Temperance, Time, Truth, Virtue and Vice, Will, Wisdom, and World.
Additionally, Adler said that the list of Great Books needed to be regularly reevaluated. With this in mind, I hope that I have made the case for including this novel by Ray Bradbury and including it in the open and extended list Adler proposed.
As with other Bradbury writings, there is often an earlier life or version before the published date. While Fahrenheit 451 was published in 1953 (60 years ago and still in print), there were earlier kernel versions in short stories - "The Fireman," "Long After Midnight,", and the unpublished "Where Ignorant Armies Clash By Night."
     Fahrenheit 451 should be read as a companion story to "The Smile," "The Garbage Collector," "The Pedestrian," and "The Library." Readers can purchase the book, A Pleasure to Burn: Fahrenheit 451 Stories and see the rich thematic connections.  
     Certainly not to be read as a libertarian tract against censorship, but more as a cautionary tale of the way society can nurture anti-intellectualism, and daily inhumane behavior, this work should be removed from Jr High reading lists and moved to the Senior year of High school or possibly Freshman year of college. It would be essential to have a teacher who can read and see that the work is only in a minuscule way about censorship. Beyond being a masterfully crafted exploration of a dystopian society, the work examines numerous humane themes and offers a profound portrayal of the outcome of a society living the "unexamined life."