Historians from Illinois

Arthur Hill Cash (February 4, 1922 – December 29, 2016) was an American scholar of 18th-century English literature.Cash is best known as the author of the definitive two-volume biography of Laurence Sterne, published between 1975 and 1986. He also wrote a popular biography of the 18th-century politician John Wilkes, who was influential in developing ideas concerning civil liberties in England and the United States. The book, titled John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty, was one of three finalists for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for biography.
Cash taught university literature courses for forty-five years, including popular classes in the Bible and Greek and Roman literature. He retired from the State University of New York at New Paltz as one of a handful of faculty with the title of Distinguished Professor. Before that he taught at the University of Colorado, the University of New Mexico, and Colorado State University.
Cash was born in Gary, Indiana, and lived in or near Chicago for many years. Starting work as a stage actor, at the beginning of American involvement in the Second World War, he joined the 108th General Hospital unit. After the war, he enrolled at the University of Chicago on the G.I. Bill, and completed his graduate education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Columbia University.
He married Dorothy Moore Cash (later Romni Cash) and they had two children before their divorce. Their eldest son was killed in El Salvador in 1992. He married novelist Mary Gordon and they had two children together, now adults.

Randy Shilts (August 8, 1951 – February 17, 1994) was an American journalist and author. After studying journalism at the University of Oregon, Shilts began working as a reporter for both The Advocate and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations. In the 1980s, he was noted for being the first openly gay reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.His first book, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, was a biography of LGBT activist Harvey Milk. His second book, And the Band Played On, chronicled the history of the AIDS epidemic. Despite some controversy surrounding the book in the LGBT community, Shilts was praised for his meticulous documentation of an epidemic that was little-understood at the time. It was later made into an HBO film of the same name in 1993. His final book, Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military from Vietnam to the Persian Gulf, examined discrimination against lesbians and gays in the military.
Shilts garnered several accolades for his work. He was honored with the 1988 Outstanding Author award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the 1990 Mather Lectureship at Harvard University, and the 1993 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists' Association. Diagnosed with HIV in 1985, Shilts died of an AIDS-related illness in 1994 at the age of 42.