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. 4, July 2025

Feature Articles

  • Mathias Splitlog: Missouri's Indigenous Industrialist, by Greg Olson
  • Favoring Neither North nor South: Missouri Neutralists and the 1861 Secession Crisis, by Thomas R. Baker
  • Protest in the Heartland: The Spring 1968 Incident at Southeast Missouri State College, by Joe P. Dunn

From the Stacks

Research Center–Kansas City

  • The Congressional Papers of William J. "Bill" Randall, by Syd Stoll

Book Reviews

  • Hard Times in an American Workhouse, 1853–1920, by Gregg Andrews
    Reviewed by Chad Pearson
  • Little Helpers: Harry Vaughan, His Cronies, and Corruption in the Truman Administration, by John Robert Greene
    Reviewed by Steven Wagner
  • Radical Atlas of Ferguson, USA, by Patty Heyda
    Reviewed by Colin Gordon
  • Mob Rule in the Ozarks: The Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad Strike, 1921–1923, by Kenneth C. Barnes
    Reviewed by Jon Huibregste
  • A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs, by Crystal R. Sanders
    Reviewed by Stephanie Y. Evans

Book Notes

  • The Girardeaus: An Eighteenth-Century French Colonial Family in Upper Louisiana, by Charlotte Young Slinkard
  • Disaster at 39,000 Feet: How Small-Town America Came Together at a Time of Crisis, by Enfys McMurry
  • Humans of St. Louis: The People of St. Louis, One Photo and Story at a Time, by Lindy Drew and Dessa Somerside
  • Ballyhoo! The Roughhousers, Con Artists, and Wildmen Who Invented Professional Wrestling, by Jon Langmead
  • Forged in Fire: Grief, Purpose, and Devotion of a Woman at War, by Robert L. Gangwere
  • Lutherans of Cole County, Missouri: A History, by Jeremy P. Ämick

News in Brief

Cover Description

Riding the Comet roller coaster at Forest Park Highlands Amusement Park, St. Louis, circa 1941. [Arthur Witman Photograph Collection, S0733]

Missouri Times - Latest Issue

Missouri Times Spring 2025

Spring Missouri Times 2025
  • 2025 Missouri Conference on History recap
  • Otto Widmann: Missouri's Pioneer Ornithologist
  • Missouri's Early Conservation Movement
  • Commemorating the Fall of Saigon 50th Anniversary
  • Kansas City Photojournalist Raymond E. Corey Collection
  • Dedication of William Guitar Little Missouri Gallery of Art
  • Mail Carrier with a Camera Exhibition Opens
  • Pioneer Journalist Sara Lockwood Williams
  • Old Phelps County Courthouse Survived Demolition
  • Rare Photographs Discovered of Former Pulaski County Courthouse
  • Como Music Project Seeks Donated Materials
  • St. Louis Research Center Acquires Fontbonne University Archives
  • National History Day honors Teachers of the Year
  • Volunteer Spotlight: Suzanne Flanegin

Read the Spring 2025 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.