Best Scar Wins

Award-winning Army Strategist and top West Point professor ML (Matt) Cavanaugh shares the lessons from his 25-year military career that enabled him to turn pain to power, scars to strength, and become great by doing good.

Inspired by a near-death combat experience, Cavanaugh transformed himself from failure to fit with an act of radical generosity. He donated a kidney to a stranger, an act that also helped save the lives of seven others dying of kidney failure. Then, just months after surgery, Cavanaugh became the only living kidney donor and the fastest American ever to run the toughest self-supported ultramarathon series in the world.

Best Scar Wins follows Cavanaugh as he uses the lessons he picked up from his military career to navigate the trials of the world’s worst deserts across four continents—from scorpions to penguins—on a mission to save lives. The eleven lessons in this astonishing adventure story—including how to expand your “endurability”—illuminate a path that anyone can follow to become more than they were before.

In a call to live generously in support of others, Best Scar Wins shows you how to embrace your scars as triumphs—not as experiences that hold you back but as lessons that define how you move forward.