WestWords is a collection of columns by Dennis West that have appeared in The Beacon, a newspaper that covers the Walworth County, Wisconsin, area. The essays, most of which are humorous, contain a great deal of information, trivia and (non-caloric) food for thought. Among the subjects treated in WestWords are: Pogo, the Old English Sheep Dog who was in the running for world s dumbest canine The author s mother, a frustrated nurse who painfully injected her children with penicillin the consistency of toothpaste every time they sneezed A musical career that ended when the author took a shot at playing drum major instead of his sousaphone and couldn t keep 100 University of Illinois band members from marching through a hedge A Roman used-chariot salesman who invented a truth serum plus essays about language misuse, TV commercials, heavy-metal music and much more. Add a generous helping of trivia and you have a humorously entertaining, informative and thought-provoking collection by award-winning journalist Dennis West, publisher and editor of a wildly popular small-town newspaper called The Beacon.