Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future

by Jean M. Twenge

One of the first reporters to write full-time about the AIDS epidemic was Randy Shilts (b. 1951). Growing up in Iowa, Shilts hadn’t known anyone else who was gay. He came out while an undergraduate at the University of Oregon, and after several years of writing for the gay newspaper the Advocate he was hired by the San Francisco Chronicle in 1981. Before long, he was reporting on AIDS full-time. He eventually wrote And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, a sweeping history of not only the epidemic but the gay community’s reaction to it and what he viewed as the Reagan administration’s catastrophic failure to do anything about it. The 1987 book, though controversial in some circles, was a bestseller and was made into an HBO miniseries about the AIDS epidemic. Shilts tested HIV positive in March 1987 and by 1993 suffered from two of the maladies described in his book, pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and Kaposi’s sarcoma. “HIV is certainly character-building,” he said. “It’s made me see all of the shallow things we cling to, like ego and vanity. Of course, I’d rather have a few more T-cells and a little less character.” Shilts died from AIDS in February 1994. He was 42.