All Mississippi State students, employees and community members are encouraged to include the university’s Maroon Edition book, “Hold on with a Bulldog Grip,” in their summer reading selections.

The book is being made available to incoming freshman students and transfers in their summer Orientation packets, and others can purchase the book at MSU’s Barnes & Noble bookstore or through other booksellers.

Purchases also can be made online from the University Press of Mississippi at www.upress.state.ms.us/books/2240.

Released in April, the biography on the nation’s 18th president was written by MSU and Grant Library historians John Marszalek, David Nolen and Louie Gallo, along with former Rhode Island Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Williams.

Maroon Edition is the university’s common reading book program. Activities inspired by the annually selected book are held throughout the year for students at all class levels, as well as interested administrators, faculty and staff members.

“‘Bulldog Grip’ offers a concise but no less compelling account of Grant’s remarkable life as soldier, general, president and best-selling author,” MSU President Mark E. Keenum said. “I was honored to contribute an afterword examining the long-standing connection between Grant and our institution–a story that many may not know.”

MSU has been home to the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library since 2009. In 2017, Williams and his wife Virginia donated their unparalleled private Abraham Lincoln and Civil War collection to MSU, cementing the university’s status as one of the leading places to study the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. Learn more at www.usgrantlibrary.org and http://lib.msstate.edu/williamscollection.

MSU’s Center for Teaching and Learning oversees the selection of the Maroon Edition book. For more information, visit www.maroonedition.msstate.edu.