Publications

The State Historical Society of Missouri’s publications program features the Missouri Historical Review, a journal of carefully researched articles written to inform and entertain readers who are interested in the history of Missouri and its region. The articles, which cover all historic time periods and a wide array of topics, are illustrated with photos, maps, and other images selected from the Society’s extensive archives. Reviews of recent books and “From the Stacks” articles exploring the Society’s collections complete the reader’s experience. Visit the online archives for more than 1,500 articles published since the inaugural MHR issue in 1906.

The Missouri Times, a quarterly newsletter, keeps SHSMO members and other interested audiences abreast of recent happenings and upcoming events at the State Historical Society of Missouri. The Times offers insights into new collections, current art exhibitions, ongoing educational programs, and the people who engage in the Society’s work.

The State Historical Society also publishes a select list of books that advance understanding of Missouri’s history and augment the Society’s efforts to collect, preserve, and circulate texts and other materials of historic importance to the state. Online publishing projects include the biographical Historic Missourians website for juvenile readers and the Missouri Encyclopedia, a comprehensive reference work still under development.

Missouri Historical Review - Latest Issue

Vol. 116, No. 2, January 2022

Missouri Historical Review January 2022 cover

Feature Articles

  • River Roustabouts of St. Louis, By Gregg Andrews
  • Missouri’s Woodstock: Politics and Counterculture at the 1974 Ozark Music Festival, By Clinton Lawson
  • “I Wanted to Do It for Missouri”: A My Missouri Series Lecture, By Norm Stewart

From the Stacks

Research Center–Rolla

  • Philosophy of Service: Constance McPherson and the Peace Corps, 1962–1964, By Kathleen Seale

Book Reviews

  • “We Gave Them Thunder”: Marmaduke’s Raid and the Civil War in Missouri and Arkansas, By William Garrett Piston and John C. Rutherford
    Reviewed by Stephen D. Engle
  • Madam C. J. Walker: The Making of an American Icon, By Erica L. Ball
    Reviewed by Jane E. Dabel
  • The Names of John Gergen: Immigrant Identities in Early Twentieth-Century St. Louis, By Benjamin Moore
    Reviewed by Gary R. Mormino
  • Paper Trails: The US Post and the Making of the American West, By Cameron Blevins
    Reviewed by John Majewski
  • The Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Arkansas: How Protestant White Nationalism Came to Rule a State, By Kenneth C. Barnes
    Reviewed by Sean Rost
  • No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice, By Karen L. Cox
    Reviewed by Elizabeth Gritter

Book Notes

  • The Richest Soil Grows the Deepest Roots: Life in Platte County’s Missouri River Bottoms, By Helen Ruth Poss Marr and Elizabeth Terese Marr
  • Wrestling at the Chase, By Ed Wheatley
  • Semi-Civilized: The Moro Village at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, By Michael C. Hawkins
  • The Life and Times of Missouri’s Charles Parsons: Between Art and War, By John Launius
  • Steamboat Disasters of the Lower Missouri River, By Vicki Berger Erwin and James Erwin
  • The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A History, By Kristie C. Wolferman
  • The Will of Missouri: The Life, Times, and Influence of Alexander William Doniphan, By the Alexander Doniphan Committee

News in Brief

Cover Description

Building the Eads Bridge, 1873, by Frank Nuderscher (1880–1959). Oil on canvas, undated. [SHSMO Art Collection, 1963.0002]

Featured Books

Four Turbulent Decades: A Cartoon History of America, 1962–2001, From the Pen of Tom Engelhardt

Four Turbulent Decades cover

Momentous events from the civil rights movement and the President Kennedy assassination to 9/11 are distilled into elemental images in the work of Tom Engelhardt, longtime political cartoonist with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Selections of Engelhardt’s evocative drawings from the State Historical Society of Missouri’s art collection are accompanied by narratives from art historian and SHSMO curator Joan Stack that add context and reveal artistic influences and techniques.

Achieve the Honorable: A Missouri Congressman's Journey from Warm Springs to Washington

Skelton book cover

Growing up during the Great Depression and World War II, Ike Skelton dreamed of joining the military. That dream was shattered when he contracted one of the most dreaded diseases of the era: polio. Far from abandoning hope, he received treatment at Warm Springs, Georgia, overcame his disability, and went on to become a college athlete, a celebrated lawyer, a Missouri state senator, and a US congressman.

Longer than a Man's Lifetime in Missouri

Goebel book cover

Gert Goebel arrived in Franklin County, Missouri, in 1834, an eighteen-year-old caught up in the early stages of a transformative immigration wave that eventually brought more than one hundred thousand newcomers from Germany to Missouri (and several million to America). Four decades later, Goebel drew from his range of experiences as a pioneer farmer, wide-ranging hunter, county surveyor, and state legislator to write a vivid and insightful memoir describing German settlement, state politics, and Civil War events within Missouri.

“But I Forget That I am a Painter and Not a Politician”: The Letters of George Caleb Bingham

Bingham cover

The majority of the letters in this volume were written to Bingham’s close friend James S. Rollins, a wealthy mid-Missouri lawyer, politician, and father of the University of Missouri. In these letters, the artist-cum-politician describes his work on paintings and discusses political issues and candidates of the day—from the early years of the Whig Party in Missouri to the Unionists and Radicals of the Civil War period to the Democrats of the Reconstruction era.

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