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. 119, No. 2, January 2025

January 2025 MHR cover

Feature Articles

  • The Missouri Scenic Rivers System and the Origins of the Property Rights Movement, by Brooks Blevins 
  • Journal of a Bombing Mission: B-24 “Blue D,” Italy 1945, by Charles R. Mayes, Part 2, with an Epilogue by Daniel A. Crews, annotated by Daniel A. Crews, Kimberly Harper, and John Brenner
  • “That's the Pioneer Spirit We Inherited”: The Herschends, the Ozarks, and the Rise of Silver Dollar City, an interview with Peter Herschend by Senator Roy Blunt

From the Stacks

Research Center–Kansas City

  • Establishing the Jewish Education Council, 1966–1968, by Bridget D. Haney

Book Reviews

  • Mound City: The Place of the Indigenous Past and Present in St. Louis, by Patricia Cleary
    Reviewed by Kathleen DuVal
  • New Fields of Adventure: The Writings of Lyman G. Bennett, Civil War Soldier and Topographical Engineer, 1861–1865, by Lyman G. Bennett, edited by M. Jane Johansson
    Reviewed by Carl J. Moneyhon
  • Broadcasting the Ozarks: Si Siman and Country Music at the Crossroads, by Kitty Ledbetter and Scott Foster Siman
    Reviewed by Mark Guarino
  • Jolliet and Marquette: A New History of the 1673 Expedition, by Mark Walczynski
    Reviewed by Paul W. Mapp
  • The Origins of Missouri English: A Historical Sociophonetic Analysis, by Christopher Strelluf and Matthew J. Gordon
    Reviewed by Mary Kohn
  • Come Fly with Me: The Rise and Fall of Trans World Airlines, by Daniel Rust and Alan B. Hoffman
    Reviewed by M. Houston Johnson V
  • Building a House Divided: Slavery, Westward Expansion, and the Roots of the Civil War, by Stephen G. Hyslop
    Reviewed by Michael Todd Landis
  • Abolitionist of the Most Dangerous Kind: James Montgomery and His War on Slavery, by Todd Mildfelt and David D. Schafer
    Reviewed by Matthew E. Stanley

Book Notes

  • Midwest Bedrock: The Search for Nature's Soul in America's Heartland, by Kevin J. Koch
  • The Jefferson City Civil Pilots: From Lincoln University to Tuskegee Airmen, by Michelle Brooks
  • Respectable Roughnecks: The True Story of a Forgotten Champion, by Brendon Steenbergen, Foreword by Gary Pinkel
  • When Grandpa Delivered Babies and Other Ozarks Vignettes, by Benjamin G. Rader
  • The Shooter at Midnight: Murder, Corruption, and a Farming Town Divided, by Sean Patrick Cooper
  • Ste. Genevieve, Missouri: A Walk through History, by Valerie Battle Kienzle, Foreword by Bill Hart

News in Brief

Cover Description

Fishing on Indian Creek near McNatt, Missouri, early 1900s. [Lynn Morrow Papers, R1000]

Learn More about the Missouri Historical Review

Missouri Times - Latest Issue

Missouri Times Winter 2025

Missouri Times Winter 2025 cover
  • Peter Herschend, co-founder of Silver Dollar City, reflects on Family's Sucess in the entertainment industry
  • SHSMO executive director Gary Kremer marks 50 years of published works
  • Congressional records offer detailed notes of U.S. Senator Kit Bond's tenure 1987 - 2010
  • The State Historical Society receives large Ozarks collections dating to 1800s
  • Donated collection to Cape Girardeau Research Center offers study of rural schools in Bollinger County
  • St. Louis photographs chronicles Union Station rebirth in the 1980s
  • Oral history program traces Missouri's labor movement
  • And more!

Read Missouri Times Winter 2025 Issue

Learn More About the Missouri Times

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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