This chapter begins by highlighting southern African archaeology’s importance at a global level, stressing the enormous time-depth over which hominins have been present in the region, the diversity of its archaeological record, and the contributions that this has made and continues to make to broader debates within archaeology and anthropology. Next, it indicates key changes made here relative to the first edition of this book in 2002 and then identifies the main sources of evidence available for reconstructing southern Africa’s past. These include archaeology, palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental science, ethnographic data, historical linguistics, genetics, and oral and written histories. The chapter then introduces the overall structure of the book, ending with a discussion and justification of some key matters of nomenclature regarding how southern Africa’s varied inhabitants have been/should be called. Guidance is also given on matters of orthography relative to sounds not used in English.

Chapter 7 examines veterans’ reflections on key war legacies in light of their return journeys. After the war, veterans grappled with complex and politically charged narratives about the war that shaped how they viewed their individual experiences. Those that returned to Việt Nam faced new stories and memories about the war that challenged these narratives. Rather than challenging their views, the experience of returning to Việt Nam often reinforced their existing values and beliefs, and many returnees drew from return experiences to support their existing views. This chapter situates returnees’ views in broader historiographical debates on four key issues: perceptions of defeat (or victory) in Vietnam, the anti-war movement, the association between “their” war and war crimes, and the justness of the war. The majority of veterans raised these key legacy issues in their interviews without prompting, indicating how polarizing and contentious the Vietnam War continues to be.

This chapter introduces the themes and tensions related to historiography on Islam’s fourth caliph, ʿAlī. Anti-ʿAlids (nawāṣib) were Muslims who disliked ʿAlī and his descendants, while ʿAlī's partisans, pro-ʿAlids and Shīʿīs, exalted him and developed doctrines about the nature of his authority. All of these early Muslims transmitted reports about ʿAlī's character, which resulted in portrayals that were diverse and contradictory. Sunnī and Shīʿī writers sifted through such reports not only to construct an image of ʿAlī that they considered authentic, but also to validate their own communal identities and conceptions of religion.

With the conclusion of each presidential election, scholars, commentators, and political junkies begin the quadrennial exercise of discussing reform of the presidential nomination system. If we could alter the process in just the right way, goes the thinking, we would get better nominees, a more informative campaign, and everyone, or at least a lot of people, would be happier with their choices on the next presidential ballot.

And why not? How hard can it be to improve our presidential nominating system? After all, in 2016, both Gallup and Pew reported that voters had historically negative impressions of both major party nominees, so changes that would improve voter satisfaction must be low-hanging fruit. Indeed, the authors in this volume have offered up a number of thoughtful, intelligent suggestions for reform.

This chapter starts by giving a theoretical definition of gender and its relation to language. It gives the rationale for the focus of the book on women politicians and a critical overview of work in the field of gender and language research investigating language and gender in the professional workplace. It also critically reviews linguistic research into political discourse and the much smaller body of work relating to gender, language and politics. In doing so it highlights the originality of the book’s focus on gender and the interactional details of political discourse in political institutions. The chapter also explains relevant theories and empirical research on women’s representation in politics from the discipline of political science. It describes research into the descriptive and substantive representation; examines current re-evaluations of the ‘critical mass’ theory; and examines the ‘different voice’ ideology relating to expectations about gender and communicative styles. It concludes by citing calls from political scientists for additional methods from a wider range of disciplines with which to measure women’s substantive representation and describes the overall structure of the book.