The government-approved version of history is explained to Montag by his boss, Beatty, when Montag becomes depressed at his job without understanding why. Beatty's explanation is that society became too large for books to have relevance; with every minority or group in society able to be offended by books, they became a source of contention and unhappiness instead of knowledge and entertainment. Because people liked the simplicity of television, books were deemed objects that promoted unnecessarily complicated thinking, so firemen were retooled to burn books and keep people stupider, but happy.
In reality, as the government gained more and more control over news and entertainment, they decided that books were a threat to their total control of societal opinion. Books are unregulated, and they allow any person to read ideas that oppose the official ideas. Since books threatened the government, it banned them, keeping control over the population with disposable, pointless, safe television programming.
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