Join host David Hartmann and fellow Columbia alumni as the book club discusses Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury; a selection  by our book club host. Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.

Date: Tuesday, February 17, 2026

Times: 6:30PM Central, 7:30PM Eastern, 4:30PM Pacific. For those in Europe the time is 12:30AM in London on February 18.

Location: Zoom Video Conference

Cost: Free

Reviews

“Brilliant . . . Startling and ingenious . . . Mr. Bradbury’s account of this insane world, which bears many alarming resemblances to our own, is fascinating.” —Orville Prescott, The New York Times

“A masterpiece . . . A glorious American classic everyone should read: It’s life-changing if you read it as a teen, and still stunning when you reread it as an adult.” —Alice Hoffman, The Boston Globe

“One of this country’s most beloved writers . . . A great storyteller, sometimes even a mythmaker, a true American classic.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

Photo Credit: Simon and Schuster Promotional Material, Public Domain