[1] Tillotson's book, published in 2000, The Public at Play: Gender and the Politics of Recreation in Postwar Ontario is an influential study of post-war Canada, and was described in a review published by the Canadian Historical Review as "...a welcome and worthwhile contribution to our growing appreciation for the complexities and contradictions that shaped the postwar period.
"[2] It won the Canadian Historical Association's Clio (Ontario) Award for Excellence in that same year.
[3] Her second book, Contributing Citizens: Modern Charitable Fundraising and the Making of the Welfare State,1920-66, published in 2008, was shortlisted for the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize and the Harold Adams Innis Prize in the same year.
This book won the François-Xavier Garneau Medal, and was praised by the jury as "a major contribution to the historiography of contemporary Canada.
"[4] The book was widely and positively reviewed, with the Canadian Historical Review describing it as "...amazingly well researched,"[5] It was also short-listed for the Awards to Scholarly Publications Programs Book Prize in Humanities and Social Sciences from the Canadian Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences.