The diversity of climate variability studies has grown substantially over the last decade, especially as policy makers now demand less uncertainty in future predictions of climate change. Under this umbrella of research, work has focused mainly on either modeling past climates(e.g., experimenting with quasi-realistic climate models, such as general circulation models) or reconstructing past climates from proxies in natural archives. Effectively linking these two approaches has become one of the holy grails of recent climate change research, especially with a view to testing models and improving model parameterization. This new book reports on progress and findings of such an ambitious program. This book is the synthesis of a major German research program, Climate in Historical Times(KIHZ), which started in 1998. The program was undertaken by five German National Research Centres, with contributions from another nine German university and Leibniz Association institutes. It contains 23 peer-reviewed chapters that the editors divide into two sections. The first section comprises review papers on topics linked to the overall program and, after an introduction to the Holocene, includes nonlinear dynamics of the climate system, an introduction to quasi-realistic climate models, Holocene climate variability from model simulations, and various paleoarchive formations, including marine sediments, corals, varved lake sediments, tree rings, and ice cores.