Making the American Mouth

Price: $45.95  

Subtitle: Dentists and Public Health in the Twentieth Century
Author: Alyssa Picard
Subject: Medicine, Public Health
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-4535-6
Pages: 312 pages
Publication Date: March 2008
Series: Critical Issues in Health and Medicine

Awards:

A 2010 AAUP Best of the Best Title

Praise for Making the American Mouth:

“This fascinating book is the first to explore the social and cultural history of dentistry in the United States. Picard skillfully illuminates the relationship between the emerging dental profession and contemporary developments in child health, American consumer culture, and gender and race relations in the United States. She draws on an impressive range of primary sources to illustrate the historical roots of Americans’ 'dental obsession.”
—Heather Munro Prescott, professor of history, Central Connecticut State University

"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 20th century American health care and public health."
—Richard Meckel, Brown University

"In nine chapters Picard describes how American dentists were involved in various social movements during the 20th century. Their involvement encompassed public health starting in the early part of the century, efforts to fluoridate the nations water supplies to prevent tooth decay, social movements for racial and gender equity at mid-century, and the promotion of cosmetic services at the end of the century (a movement that continues today). The book is well written and well researched, interesting, and highly informative. It helps explain the obsession in the US with having perfect teeth and a gleaming white smile. Anyone who wore braces as a child or adult will find it fascinating. Recommended."
—Choice, Dec 2009

"Good teeth signal social class and intellectual achievement [in America], as Alyssa Picard knows well. In The Making of the American Mouth, she provides an engaging history of the evolution of American dentistry, including the profession’s influence over our social norms and health policy. It’s a book that anyone keen to understand and improve our current national state of oral health ought to read."
—Health Affairs

"An intriguing social history of American dentistry."
—American Historical Review

Why are Americans so uniquely obsessed with teeth? Perfect 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, midcentury 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.