Walter R. Borneman

Walter R. Borneman may be best-known in Colorado's mountains as the co-author of A Climbing Guide to Colorado's Fourteeners, the history and standard routes of Colorado's 54 peaks above 14,000 feet, first published in 1978 and in-print for 25 years. He also has a master's degree in history and is the author of 10 books and numerous articles about mountains, railroads, and the American West, including Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land (Harper), a finalist for the 2004 Colorado Authors Book Award; 1812: The War that Forged a Nation (Harper); The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America (Harper), winner of the 2007 Society of Colonial Wars for the State of New York Book Award; and Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America, winner of the 2008 Tennessee Library Association History Book Award. His story of the race to build the southwestern transcontinental railroad will be published in 2010.

Borneman has given keynote talks to historical societies and presidential sites across the country, such as the Colorado Historical Society, the Alaska Historical Society, and both the James K. Polk birthplace and ancestral home.

Borneman served as the first chairman of the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative (1996-99) and is on the board of the Colorado Mountain Club Foundation. He was the heritage coordinator for the Colorado Centennial-Bicentennial Commission (1975-76), and the assistant to the director and acting director of the Colorado Historical Society (1977-80).

Borneman has undergraduate and graduate degrees in history from Western State College of Colorado (1974, 1975) and wrote his master's thesis on a town characteristic of the western mining frontier. He received his law degree from the University of Denver (1981) and his practice frequently involved historic preservation issues. From 1982 to 1985, he represented the Colorado Historical Society in the reconstruction of the Georgetown Loop Mining and Railroading Park in one of the West's premiere national historic landmark districts. Currently, he is the president of the Walter V. and Idun Y. Berry Foundation, which funds post-doctoral fellowships in children's health at Stanford University.

He lives in Colorado.

The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America

1812: The War That Forged a Nation

Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land

Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America

America’s Forgotten Wars

America’s Railroads

The Importance of Teaching History