Eric Olmanson studied geography and environmental history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After completing his PhD in 2000 he served as an institutional historian until 2008. Since then he has been a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has worked on various research and writing projects. His first book, The Future City on the Inland Sea: A History of Imaginative Geographies of Lake Superior, was published by Ohio University Press in 2007. It won the Great Lakes American Studies Association and Ohio University Press book award and was awarded the J. B. Jackson Prize by the Association of American Geographers. He is currently writing a book about the American Medical Center for Burma, 1945–1965.