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Many people, even perhaps the occasional Eos reader, associate the term “global change” with warming caused by mankind's recent addiction to fossil fuels. Some may also be well aware of enormous global changes in the distant past uninfluenced by humans; for example, Pleistocene ice ages. But was there any “global change” between the end of the last ice age and the onset of industrialization? The answer to this question is addressed early— in the title, even—in the new book Global Change in the Holocene . I don't suggest anyone stop reading after the title, though; the rest of the book is both highly informative and a real pleasure to read. The opening chapter tells us that the Holocene is certainly not, as sometimes charged, a “bland, pastoral coda to the contrasted movements of a stirring Pleistocene symphony” Rather, it is a “period of continuous change.” Melodious language aside, the combination of sustained and high‐amplitude climatic variability and a wealth of well‐preserved, precisely datable paleoclimate archives make the Holocene unique. Only by studying the Holocene can we hope to unravel the low‐frequency workings of the Earth system and the degree to which humans have changed our world. This book sets out to teach the reader how to obtain the relevant data and how to use it to do much more than showing static analogues of possible future climate states. It challenges researchers to discern in their data the effects of the dynamic processes underlying coupled variability in the Earth's climate and ecosystems. These processes continue to act today and it is through providing an understanding of these system dynamics in the Holocene that paleoenvironmental studies can make the greatest contribution to future‐oriented concerns.