Brian Dolan is Professor of Social Medicine and Medical Humanities at the University of California, San Francisco.

He has published widely in the areas of British social history during the age of Enlightenment, including LADIES OF THE GRAND TOUR (HarperCollins, 2001), a history of women traveling in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which looks at how Continental travel enabled them to carve out spaces for themselves in the intellectual geography of enlightenment England, and WEDGWOOD: The First Tycoon (Penguin Putnam, 2004), a biography of Josiah Wedgwood.

He also writes about the history of technology, including his most recent book, INVENTING ENTERTAINMENT: The Player Piano and The Origins of on American Musical Industry (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008).