This is the story of the depraved, no-future land called the American Midwest in the 1980s, and of a boy who rose from a dismal town (population 2300) to become one of the biggest selling musicians of the 1990s. A kid from a broken home, and a college drop-out, Trent Reznor wrote the material that would become Pretty Hate Machine while a janitor at a studio where he tinkered after-hours. Each of the midnight layers that made the album opener "Head Like a Hole" such a claustrophobic head-trip came from just one guy, on one synth, in one room. Daphne Carr's book will fill in the background of Trent Reznor's early years in Mercer, Pennsylvania - a miserable backwater offering only television and radio waves as indications that interesting places did exist. Somewhere else. Daphne Carr interviews dozens of hardcore NIN fans, digging up memories of what it was like to encounter this album in 1989, and discussing how Trent Reznor's persona and worldview impacted on the lives of these fans - including herself. This book not only tells the story of the birth of Nine Inch Nails, but also gives voice to a peculiarly American subculture that - especially since the Columbine shootings - has been widely vilified: Mall Goths, of whom Trent Reznor is undoubtedly the patron saint.