Oral health is an economic indicator. Good oral health is so much more a marker of affluence, and oral disease is a very painful and devastating indicator of poverty. It's really a way of looking at our culture, and the divide.

Journalist Mary Otto examines the state of oral healthcare in America - from the roots of dental care's separation from medical insurance coverage, to an industry-wide shift away from care and prevention, and towards cosmetic procedures - and finds the country's worsening class division and economic inequality present in even the mouths of its citizens.

Mary is author of Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America from The New Press.