The book "The Late Quaternary in the Central American Lowlands" offers a comprehensive analysis of the response of tropical lowlands to past global climate change. It is based on sedimentary evidence from Lake Petén-Itzá in Guatemala, which provides a continuous record of vegetation changes over the last 86,000 years. By combining these fossil sequences with modern samples from about 80 lakes in the Yucatán Peninsula as well as the mountains of Mexico and Guatemala, a reconstruction of climatic variables for the same period is made possible. The results show close connections between the climate and vegetation of the peninsula, as well as temperature fluctuations in the North Atlantic. These findings highlight that environmental conditions in the region were more variable than previously thought and that the current rates of regional temperature change are unprecedented in the last 86,000 years. The book addresses the challenges that modern global climate change poses for the vegetation and biodiversity of the Central American lowlands.