BW: …’Voices From the Hellmouth,’ Jon Katz’ Book Examining Geek Culture One Year After Columbine

“Andover.Net (NASDAQ: ANDN), the Internet’s leading Linux and
geekdom destination, announced that Slashdot will publish Jon Katz’
new book Voices from the Hellmouth. Katz, author of the recent book
Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho (Villard),
explores the aftermath of the Columbine High School shootings on
the culture of what society has stereotyped as “geeks” — those
kids who by nature of intelligence, individualism or interest in
games or computers are ostracized in high schools across the
nation. The Columbine hysteria made life a nightmare for these
kids, and drove the cost of being “different” way up.”

“In Voices from the Hellmouth Katz lets the kids tell their own
tale through the power of the Internet. After the Columbine High
School shootings, Katz wrote a series of articles on geeks and the
aftereffects of Columbine. Published in the uber-geek website
Slashdot, the series generated thousands of responses from kids
everywhere, and their outcries are the essence of the powerful new
Voices from the Hellmouth. These columns were entered into the
Congressional Record, linked to and reprinted on websites and
mailing lists all over the world, and examined by national media
such as the New York Times.”

“Voices from the Hellmouth is a sensitive and brutally truthful
account of the pain and alienation teenagers go through when deemed
“different” by their high school classmates. In their own
voices, geeks, nerds, goths, videogame addicts and gamers told of
peer ridicule and Geek Profiling from teachers and parents. “For a
writer, there’s nothing more humbling than to be at a loss for
words. I can’t possibly do more justice to some of these kids than
to let them speak for themselves,” writes Katz.”

Press Release