Books:

Shantyboats and Roustabouts: The River Poor of St. Louis, 1875-1930. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2022.

My Daddy’s Blues: A Childhood Memoir from the Land of Huck & Jim. San Marcos, TX: Mudcat Press, 2019.

Thyra J. Edwards: Black Activist in the Global Freedom Struggle. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011.

Insane Sisters: Or, the Price Paid for Challenging a Company Town. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, paperback ed., 2020. Originally published in 1999. Adapted to the stage by Bluff City Theatre, Hannibal, Mo, June 2019.

City of Dust: A Cement Company Town in the Land of Tom Sawyer. With a New Introduction. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, paperback ed., 2002. Originally published in 1996.

Shoulder to Shoulder? The American Federation of Labor, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1924. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Articles and Essays:

“Rose Mosenthein: From Shanty Boat to Sculling Champ.” Gateway: The Magazine of the Missouri Historical Society 42 (Spring 2022): 17-25.

“River Roustabouts of St. Louis.” Missouri Historical Review 116 (January 2022): 87-122.

“‘Little Oklahoma’: St. Louis’s Shanty-Boat Kingdom.” Gateway: The Magazine of the Missouri Historical Society 41 (Spring 2021): 17-25.

“A Pike County Lawyer Goes to the Penitentiary: The Strange Case of ‘Miss Lou Collins’, 1921-1923.” Missouri Historical Review 113 (April 2019): 166-184.

“The Lynching of Roy Hammonds: Bowling Green Missouri, 1921,” Renegade South, blog, April 21, 2019

“Unionizing the Trinity Portland Cement Company in Dallas, Texas, 1934-39.” Texas Labor History. Edited by Bruce A. Glasrud and James C. Maroney. Pp. 245-266. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2013.

“Confronting White Supremacy: The African American Left in Texas, 1874-1974.” Co-written with Bruce A. Glasrud. The Texas Left: The Radical Roots of Lone Star Liberalism. Edited by David O’Donald Cullen and Kyle G. Wilkison. Pp. 157-190. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2010.

“Black Working-Class Political Activism and Biracial Unionism: Galveston Black Longshoremen in Jim Crow Texas, 1919-1921,”Journal of Southern History 74 (August 2008): 627-668.

“Unionizing the Trinity Portland Cement Company in Dallas, Texas, 1934-39,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 111 (July 2007): 31-49.

“The Racial Politics of Reconstruction in Ralls County, Missouri, 1865-1870.” The Other Missouri History: Populists, Prostitutes, and Regular Folk. Edited with an Introduction by Thomas M. Spencer. Pp. 8-30. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2005.

“‘It’s the Music’: Kent Finlay’s Cheatham Street Warehouse in San Marcos, Texas,” Journal of Texas Music History 5 (Spring 2005): 8-25.

“Euphemia B. Koller and the Politics of Insanity in Ralls County, Missouri, 1921-1927.” Women in Missouri History: In Search of Power and Influence. Edited by LeeAnn Whites, Mary C. Neth, and Gary R. Kremer. Pp. 200-218. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004.

“Ilasco Cement Workers and the War on Booze in Ralls County, Missouri, 1903-1914. Gateway Heritage 16 (Spring 1996): 2-13.

“Immigrant Cement Workers: The Strike of 1910 in Ilasco, Missouri.” Missouri Historical Review 89 (January 1995): 162-183.

“From Robber Caves to Robber Barons: New South Missouri and the Social Construction of Mark Twain, 1910-1935.” Gateway Heritage 15 (December 1994): 4-15.

“Robert Haberman, Socialist Ideology, and the Politics of National Reconstruction in Mexico, 1920-25.” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 6 (Summer 1990): 189-211

Book Awards for Shantyboats and Roustabouts: The River Poor of St. Louis, 1875-1930. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2022

Missouri History Book Award-State Historical Society of Missouri (2023)

Hamlin Garland Prize in Popular History-Midwestern History Association (2023)

John Lyman Book Award-North American Society for Oceanic History (2023)

James V. Swift Medal for excellence in maritime history-Herman T. Pott National Inland Waterways Library, University of Missouri, St. Louis (2023)

Creative Non-Fiction

“Under the Wire,”Good Old Days, September/October 2018, 42-43.

“A combustible New Year,” Blue Mountain Review: A Journal of Culture Poetry, Literature, Art and Music 8 (Summer 2017): 54-55.

Music