During the last two decades, our knowledge of the Saharan palaeoclimates has improved enormously. Several long-term regional projects published their results, new methods of dating and of climate or vegetation reconstruction came on line, and (especially) causal models of global climatic mechanisms became much more sophisticated. Until now, however, there has been no synthesis of these advances in the vast Sahara. Robert Vernet has produced an admirable overview for the specialist and for members of ancillary disciplines such as history and archaeology. No comparable Saharan climate synthesis exists anywhere in the anglophone literature.