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. 117, No. 3, April 2023

Feature Articles

  • In Search of General Pershing's Birthplace, by John A. Filippello
  • Compulsory Voting in Kansas City: A Unique American Experiment in Electoral Reform, by James W. Endersby and Nicholas L. Brothers
  • Soul Picture Sisters: The Photography of Emme and Mamie Gerhard, by Elizabeth Eikmann

From the Stacks

Research Center–Kansas City

  • Lillian Kranitz's Oral Histories of Holocaust Survivors in Kansas City, by Surabhi Ganguly

Book Reviews

  • Union General: Samuel Ryan Curtis and Victory in the West, by William L. Shea
    Reviewed by Ethan S. Rafuse
  • Shantyboats and Roustabouts: The River Poor of St. Louis, 1875–1930, by Gregg Andrews
    Reviewed by David Roediger
  • A History of the Ozarks, Volume 3: The  Ozarkers, by Brooks Blevins
    Reviewed by Daniel S. Pierce
  • Capital's Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century, by Chad E. Pearson
    Reviewed by Thomas R. Pegram
  • Dawn's Light Woman and Nicholas Franchomme: Marriage and Law in the Illinois Country, by Carl J. Ekberg and Sharon K. Person
    Reviewed by Linda C. Jones
  • Peace and Friendship: An Alternative History of the American West, by Stephen Aron
    Reviewed by Jay H. Buckley

Book Notes

  • The Kansas City Art Institute: Architecture and Innovation, 1885–2020, by Cydney E. Millstein
  • Lost Jefferson City, by Michelle Brooks
  • Chinese Americans in the Heartland: Migration, Work, and Community, by Huping Ling
  • Eliot after The Waste Land, by Alex Sandy Primm
  • '64 Cardinals: A Team, a Season, and a Showdown for the Ages, by Robert L. Tiemann with Ron Jacober

Graduate Theses Relating to Missouri History, 2022

News in Brief

Cover Description

Farmer with a mule team pulling a sled loaded with carrots and potatoes, St. Louis County, undated. [Charles Trefts Photographs, 1903–1963, P0034-1642]

Missouri Times - Latest Issue

Missouri Times Spring 2023

Cover of the Missouri Times Spring 2023 Issue

Features:

Celebrating 125 Years since the founding of the State Historical Society of Missouri

SHSMO History Timeline 1898-2023

Sen. Thomas Hart Benton Sculpture Moved from U.S. Capitol to SHSMO Art Gallery

2023 Missouri Conference on History

Center for Missouri Studies Hosts History on Elm series & More

Download the Spring 2023 issue

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.