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. 118, No. 2, January 2024

Feature Articles

  • Benjamin F. Loan: Radical Generalship in Civil War Missouri, by Thomas A. Jones
  • “The Very Depths of Hatred and Bitterness”: The 1968 University of Missouri–Rolla and Southwest Missouri State College Basketball Melee, by Larry Gragg
  • Faith, Family, Missouri Small-Town Values, and the Entrepreneurial Spirit, An Interview with David Steward by Gary R. Kremer

From the Stacks

Research Center–Columbia

  • Records of Indigenous Enslavement in the Ste. Genevieve Archives, by Emily Peebles and John Craig Hammond

Book Reviews

  • Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion, by Elliott West
    Reviewed by Amy Kohout
  • Slavery, Religion, and Race in Antebellum Missouri: Freedom from Slavery and Freedom from Sin, by Kevin D. Butler
    Reviewed by John Patrick Daly
  • Agriculture in the Midwest, 1815–1900, by R. Douglas Hurt
    Reviewed by David D. Vail
  • Left in the Midwest: St. Louis Progressive Activism in the 1960s and 1970s, edited by Amanda L. Izzo and Benjamin Looker
    Reviewed by Gregg L. Michel
  • Truman and the Bomb: The Untold Story, by D. M. Giangreco
    Reviewed by Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C.
  • The First Migrants: How Black Homesteaders’ Quest for Land and Freedom Heralded America’s Great Migration, by Richard Edwards and Jacob K. Friefeld
    Reviewed by Bryan Jack

Book Notes

  • The Watchdog: How the Truman Committee Battled Corruption and Helped Win World War Two, by Steve Drummond
  • A. A. Fischer’s St. Louis Landscapes, by Nancy Moore Hamilton
  • Sunny Jim Bottomley: A Biography of a Hall of Fame First Baseman, by Kent Krause
  • Great Plains Forts, by Jay H. Buckley and Jeffery D. Nokes
  • Images of America: Route 66 St. Louis Style, by Joe Sonderman
  • Half the Town Burned: The Great Wooldridge Fire of 2022, by Tim Scherrer

News in Brief

Cover Description

Margarete E. “Ma” Boon standing by Boon’s Store and Post Office, Franklin, Missouri, 1952. Photo by Burford Leon Royston. [Burford Leon Royston Collection, CA6685]

Missouri Times - Latest Issue

Winter 2024

Missouri Times Winter 2024 cover

SHSMO members receive a full-color printed issue of Missouri Times delivered to them in the mail prior to this online version. Our Winter 2024 issue, highlights include: 

  • Ginger Rogers Exhibit Brings Hollywood Glamour to the SHSMO Art Gallery
  • Conversation with David Steward, founder and chairman of Worldwide Technology
  • Brownlee Grants Help Preserve Local History
  • Old-Time Fiddling Takes Center Stage
  • Hmong Immigration to Missouri Brings New Voices to SHSMO's Oral History Program
  • Old German Handwriting Letter Mystery Solved Across the Atlantic
  • New Film Explores Baby Tooth Survey during the Cold War
  • Postcard Collection Reflects American Life and Culture
  • And more!

Read Winter 2024 Issue Here

Featured Books

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

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

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

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

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.