William H. McRaven

Commanded the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, ran US Special Operations Command, and is best known to general readers for a commencement speech about making your bed.

Make Your Bed expands that into ten lessons from SEAL training, and the appeal is that none of them are about heroism: they are about small completed tasks, not ringing the bell, and finding somebody to paddle with. He writes plainly and without the swagger the genre usually carries. Sea Stories is the memoir and covers the parts the speech leaves out.