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. 115, No. 2, January 2021

Missouri Historical Review January 2021 cover

Feature Articles

  • Remembering the Ste. Genevieve Race Riot of 1930: Historical Memory and the Expulsion of African Americans from a Small Missouri Town, By Patrick Huber
  • “The Terrors and Trials of War”: The Civil War Papers of Henry and Cimbaline Fike, Edited and Annotated by Jeremy Neely and Trevor Martin
  • Reconstructing the Founding of St. Louis, By Thomas C. Danisi

From the Stacks

Research Center–Cape Girardeau

  • Commemorations of the Founding of Cape Girardeau: The Weiss Family Papers, Mary Jane Barnett Papers, and Eddleman Family Papers, By Bill Eddleman

Book Reviews

  • The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States, By Walter Johnson
    Reviewed by Kevin Boyle
  • Commonwealth of Compromise: Civil War Commemoration in Missouri, By Amy Laurel Fluker
    Reviewed by Matthew E. Stanley
  • Household War: How Americans Lived and Fought the Civil War, Edited by Lisa Tendrich Frank and LeeAnn Whites
    Reviewed by Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz
  • The Scourge of War: The Life of William Tecumseh Sherman, By Brian Holden Reid
    Reviewed by Zachery A. Fry
  • Boom and Bust in St. Louis: A Cardinals History, 1885 to the Present, By Jon David Cash
    Reviewed by Benjamin G. Rader

Book Notes

  • The Missouri-Illinois Railroad: Missouri Pacific’s Route through the Lead Belt and Little Egypt, By Charles A. Duckworth
  • Missouri: An Illustrated Timeline, 200 Years of Heroes and Rogues, Heartbreak and Triumph, By John W. Brown
  • Unwanted Spy: The Persecution of an American Whistleblower, By Jeffrey Sterling
  • Becoming Truman: 26 Years of Impersonating Our 33rd President, By Niel M. Johnson
  • Route 66 in Missouri, By Joe Sonderman
  • St. Louis Jazz: A History, By Dennis C. Owsley
  • Sedalia, By Rebecca Carr Imhauser

News in Brief

Cover Description

Rocheport View, by Robert F. Bussabarger (1922–2013). Oil on hardboard, c. 1990. Gift of the Estate of Robert F. Bussabarger. [SHSMO Art Collection, 2016.0277]

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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