Craig Michael Mullaney (born 1978) is a United States Army veteran and author of The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education (Penguin Press).

Raised in a Catholic blue-collar family in Rhode Island, Mullaney was the Bishop Hendricken High School valedictorian and was selected for nomination to the U.S. Military Academy in 1996.

Prior to arriving at Oxford, Mullaney completed Ranger School at Fort Benning, Georgia, a grueling nine-week course designed to test small-unit leadership by simulating combat stress through strenuous tactical exercises.

In 2003, Mullaney served as an infantry officer with the 10th Mountain Division as part of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, where he led a rifle platoon along the hostile border with Pakistan.

[citation needed] In the summer of 2005, Mullaney joined the faculty of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, as a history instructor and Army Exchange Officer.

[13] Reviewer Janet Maslin of The New York Times noted the "searing detail" of the Afghanistan combat description, and concluded that the memoir's "impact" comes from its account of "the inner journey of a man who is at first eager to learn as much as he can from service and scholarship.