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. 4, July 2024

Feature Articles

  • Lorenzo J. Greene’s Midwest Journal: “The Place to Get Something Substantial Published,” by Gary R. Kremer and Andrew Olden
  • “We Have the Grain, the Meat, the Sugar”: St. Louis’s Patriotic Food Show, February 1918, by Benjamin Moore
  • Colonial St. Louis: French, Spanish, Illinoisan, by Carl J. Ekberg

From the Stacks

Research Center–Columbia

  • The Long Lost Friend: Traditional German Folk Remedies in the Floyd Calvin Shoemaker Collection, by Heather Richmond

Book Reviews

  • A Man by Any Other Name: William Clarke Quantrill and the Search for American Manhood, by Joseph M. Beilein Jr.
    Reviewed by James J. Broomall
  • Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction, by Fergus M. Bordewich
    Reviewed by Dennis K. Boman
  • Kansas City’s Montgall Avenue: Black Leaders and the Street They Called Home, by Margie Carr
    Reviewed by Jason Roe
  • Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class, by Max Fraser
    Reviewed by Thomas Kiffmeyer
  • Theatre on the American Frontier, by Thomas A. Bogar
    Reviewed by Matthew Mancini
  • The Politics of Trash: How Governments Used Corruption to Clean Cities, 1890–1929, by Patricia Strach and Kathleen S. Sullivan
    Reviewed by James W. Endersby

Book Notes

  • Prelude to a Century: The 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, by Will Grant
  • Kingdom Quarterback: Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City Chiefs, and How a Once Swingin’ Cow Town Chased the Ultimate Comeback, by Mark Dent and Rustin Dodd
  • 100 Things to Do on Route 66 Before You Die, Second Edition, by Jim Hinckley
  • Celebrate the History of Wildwood, Missouri, by Wildwood Historic Preservation Commission/Jill F. VonGruben
  • Enslavement and the Underground Railroad in Missouri and Illinois, by Julie D. Nicolai
  • An Outstate Missouri Family Connects with Canada’s Capital: A Memoir of 1953, by Michael D. Sublett

News in Brief

Index to Volume 118

Cover Description

Richard “Dick” Royston and Elsie Hendrix pumping water from the cistern at her home in southern Howard County, early 1950s. [Burford Leon Royston Collection, CA6685]

Missouri Times - Latest Issue

Missouri Times Spring 2024

Missouri Times Spring 2024 cover

Features:

  • 19th and 20th Century Photographs Added to SHSMO Digital Collections
  • Harvard University Students Credits Her Sucess to National History Day in Missouri
  • Simmons Bank Donates Contemporary Artworks to State Historical Society
  • Award-Winning Animated Film Inspired by Missouri Creole Folktale
  • Congressional Papers of Bill Emerson Focus on U.S. Role in Combatting Global Hunger
  • Men of No Reputation Offers First Account of a Leading Confidence Man in the Midwest
  • ....and more!

Read Spring 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.