Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a powerful book about a future American society that fears and hates books and prefers instead to live an ignorant, happy life as the world darkens around them . Ultimately, this society is nearly decimated by the nuclear holocaust unleashed by America's last war. The protagonist of this story, Guy Montag, is a fireman whose job is to burn books, but he eventually turns to the fire department and survives the nuclear bombs by fleeing to the countryside. There he finds a group of wandering former scholars who are desperately trying to preserve the books of the past by creating a vast network of former readers who memorize the great works they have read. They believe that the key to rebuilding society lies in the shelves of this human library. If I were Guy Montag and could only save five books for humanity, I would choose books that help society balance its rationality with its emotional impulses. Ever since Homo sapiens roamed the Earth, man has asked himself the question: why should I make this choice? This question asks the interviewer to answer based on his or her reason, passion, or a combination of both. This future society will have to determine the role that reason and passion will play in the important decisions to come, and the books I have selected will help them make informed choices. These books are The Complete Anthology of the Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare, A Discourse on the Method by Rene Descartes, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, A Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Few writers, if any, have captured the full breadth of human emotion like the British playwright and poet William Shakespea... middle of paper... the measure of any great society is not only its ability to rebuild from the ashes of catastrophe but also learning from the mistakes that led to the disaster. The ultimate lesson of Fahrenheit 451 is that ignoring reality means suffering the consequences. The Americans in the book are condemned because they collectively shun both reason and passion. They avoid reason because it requires arduous thought effort, and they avoid passion because emotions create the possibility of experiencing disappointment along with triumph. To overcome current circumstances and demonstrate America's greatness, survivors will have to strive to bridge the connection between their minds and hearts to make each of them worthy of Shakespeare's declaration, "the elements so mixed in him that Nature could stand up and tell the whole world, "This was a man".!"