For nearly fifty years John McCutcheon has been plucking magnificent stories out of history, the news, conversations, and memory and spreading them far and wide. With his masterful storytelling and his incisive songwriting, he can be humorous, touching, inspiring, and always illuminating. Whether on a South Dakota basketball court, in a small-town library, on a Sarajevo square, or in a World War I trench, “He has an uncanny ability to breathe new life into the familiar. His storytelling has the richness of fine literature.” β Washington Post