OK, so I'm going to take these out of order from how I presented them in the initial short version of my reading list
I'm going further into these two first because they are probably the ones most likely to raise eyebrows or objections. They have nothing quite so directly to do with software, let alone free software. They aren't immediately practical in the way that, oh, some sort of checklist or HOWTO comprising exact examples of syntax and options might be.
But they represent a broader class of works that are crucial for dismantling some all-too-contemporary mythologies to which certain folks cling (to put it on the charitable side). These works begin to counter a lot of misinformation and ignorance promoted by the unscrupulous and accepted and propagated by the ignorant, misinformation and ignorance which undercut individual freedom and autonomy so congruent with the aims and ends of software freedom.
I was reminded of Woolf's work recently while I was having trouble getting into a state of flow around something I was trying to work on, because I hadn't sufficiently ensconced myself in my office. Woolf opens to examination the antecedents to creative expression and compares situations in which one has access to those antecedents and those in which one does not.
Even more blinded by my own privilege then than now to the differential effects of sexism, I first was able to grasp those aspects of Woolf's essay that address the antecedents to creativity, the necessary underpinnings of time and opportunity to do the work necessary to form and to express tangibly any notion, however inspired. In short, I first took from this piece the importance for any person, of any sex, to have "a room of one's own".
Woolf's more specific point, throughout, was to illustrate how profoundly women, historically, have been denied the opportunity to inhabit these conditions and thus, historically, have been denied the opportunity to create and contribute at a depth and breadth comparable to that which have been afforded men.
See A. Parrish's
Programming is Forgetting: Towards a new hacker ethic
for another specific and egregious example of the kinds of barriers even comparably privileged women have faced, and far more recently, doing their work.
Loewen's book reviews history textbooks. He critiques their depiction of US history in light of historical scholarship, drawing out specifically egregious omissions, distortions, and fabrications.
(It seems two additional editions have been released since the version I have and first read.)
I have in a paperback edition of the earliest version, read shortly after I bought it all those years ago. I dug up my copy recently, prompted by conversations about Woodrow Wilson's complicity in building and perpetuating Jim Crow injustices.
Whereas one can enter a path towards challenging sexism by reading Woolf, Loewen's book addresses broader mythologies in American history around colonialism, imperialism, and racism.
See also: