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. 3, April 2022

Missouri Historical Review April 2022 cover

Feature Articles

  • Slavery and the Shaping of Catholic Missouri, 1810–1850, By Kelly L. Schmidt
  • Climbing the Ladder, Chasing the Dream: Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis, By Candace O’Connor
  • Championing Women at the Crossroads: The Suffrage Movement in Warrensburg, Missouri, 1890–1920, By Sara Brooks Sundberg, Janola Sauther, Keegan Eatherton, Caitlyn Jacks, Nicole McGinnis, and Khala Moss

From the Stacks

Research Center–Columbia

  • “She Was Marvelous”: Dorothy Jurney and the New Women’s Pages of the 1950s and 1960s, By Kimberly Harper

Book Reviews

  • This Place of Promise: A Historian’s Perspective on 200 Years of Missouri History, By Gary R. Kremer
    Reviewed by Larry Gragg
  • French St. Louis: Landscape, Contexts, and Legacy, Edited by Jay Gitlin, Robert Michael Morrissey, and Peter J. Kastor
    Reviewed by Kathleen DuVal
  • Germans in America: A Concise History, By Walter D. Kamphoefner
    Reviewed by Kristen Anderson
  • Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy: The Civil Wars of John R. Kelso, By Christopher Grasso
    Reviewed by Jeremy Neely
  • To Make a Fortune in Missouri: Meredith Miles Marmaduke 1791–1864, Santa Fe Trader, Surveyor, Merchant, Governor, Farmer, Land Speculator, Pill Peddler, By Lee M. Cullimore
    Reviewed by Zachary Dowdle
  • The Truman Court: Law and the Limits of Loyalty, By Rawn James Jr.
    Reviewed by Christopher W. Schmidt

Book Notes

  • St. Louis Fire Stations, By Robert Pauly with Dennis J. Maag
  • Burning the Breeze: Three Generations of Women in the American Midwest, By Lisa Hendrickson
  • A Culinary History of Missouri: Foodways and Iconic Dishes of the Show-Me State, By Suzanne Corbett and Deborah Reinhardt
  • Joplin’s Connor Hotel, By Chad Stebbins
  • “One of the Most Troublesome Robbery Gangs”: The Murders and Crimes of George McKeever and Francis McNeiley, By Jeffrey S. King
  • Binding Us Together: A Civil Rights Activist Reflects on a Lifetime of Community and Public Service, By Alvin L. Brooks
  • The American Revolutionary War in the West, Edited by Stephen L. Kling Jr.

Graduate Theses Relating to Missouri History, 2021

News in Brief

Cover Description

Old Mill, Appleton, Missouri, by Duane Evans Lyon (1885–1959). Oil on canvas board, 1953. Gift of Elisabeth Lyon Maughs, Mary Lyon Thomson, and Gertrude Lyon Hill. [SHSMO Art Collection, 1986.0004]

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.

Copyright © The State Historical Society of Missouri 2019–2022.  All rights Reserved.