Download Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America AudioBook Free
"Show me your tooth," the fantastic naturalist Georges Cuvier is acknowledged with declaring, "and I will let you know who you are." With this shattering new work, veteran health journalist Mary Otto looks inside America's mouth, disclosing unsettling truths about our unequal contemporary society. Teeth takes listeners over a disturbing trip into America's silent epidemic of dental disease, revealing the hidden contacts between tooth decay and stunted job leads, low educational achievement, social freedom, and the troubling condition of our public health. Otto's subject matter include the pioneering dental office who made Shirley Temple and Judy Garland's tooth sparkle on the silver screen and helped create the all-American image of "pearly whites"; Deamonte Driver, the young Maryland son whose tragic loss of life from an abscessed tooth sparked congressional hearings; and a marketing expert who offers advice to dentists how to push new and expensive treatments as well as how to keep Medicaid patients at bay. In another of its most disturbing findings, Teeth unveils that toothaches aren't an occasional hassle, but rather a chronic truth for thousands of people, including disproportionate numbers of the elderly and folks of color. Many people, Otto unveils, vacation resort to prayer to counteract the uniquely devastating effects of dental care pain. Otto also dates back in time to understand the roots of our own predicament in the history of dentistry, showing how it became segregated from mainstream medication, despite a hundred years of growing research that teeth's health and general physical health are directly related. Muckraking and paradigm-shifting, Teeth exposes for the very first time the amount and meaning of our own oral health turmoil. It joins the small shelf of books that change the way we view contemporary society and ourselves - and can spark an immediate dialogue about why our tooth matter.
