Overview

Why are Americans so uniquely obsessed with teeth? Brilliantly white, straight teeth? Making the American Mouth is at once a history of United States dentistry and a study of a billion-dollar industry. Alyssa Picard chronicles the forces that limited Americans' access to dental care in the early twentieth century and the ways dentists worked to expand that access--and improve the public image of their profession. Comprehensive in scope, this work describes how dentists' early public health commitments withered under the strain of fights over fluoride, mid-century social movements for racial and gender equity, and pressure to insure dental costs. It explains how dentists came to promote cosmetic services, and why Americans were so eager to purchase them. As we move into the twentyfirst century, dentists' success in shaping their industry means that for many, the perfect American smile will remain a distant--though tantalizing--dream.

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Reviews

In Making the American Mouth, Alyssa Picard provides us with a much needed and long overdue illumination and analysis of the important role that dentistry has played in twentieth-century American health care and public health. --Richard Meckel Brown University (12/08/2008)

In Making the American Mouth , Alyssa Picard provides us with a much needed and long overdue illumination and analysis of the important role that dentistry has played in twentieth-century American health care and public health. --Richard Meckel Brown University (12/08/2008)

Picard has provided a well-written, accessible, insightful study of dentistry in the United States that should be of interest to a wide variety of readers with an interest in the history of public health, health care, and dentistry.

Author Information

ALYSSA PICARD, PhD, is a union organizer whose work focuses on expanding health care access for non-tenure-track faculty at public universities in Michigan. She writes about the history of health care and twentieth-century social movements.

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