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Dear Friends and Colleagues, Members of the ESEH:In the hope that you are all having an enjoyable summer, I am writing to you today first and foremost because I just received the password for access to our journal Environment and History.We are very grateful to Whitehorse Press for providing all ESEH members free access to recent and current issues of Environment and History.I’d like to use this opportunity to remind you that ESEH members receive multiple benefits besides electronic access to the journal, including:a greatly reduced rate for hardcopy subscriptions  of Environment and Historya huge discount for the registration at ESEH’s biannual conferences (savings of 50 to 150 euros for the 2013 ESEH conference in Munich)the opportunity to write and publish entries for the Arcadia Project (http://www.environmentandsociety.org/arcadia)an opportunity to apply for participation in ESEH summer schoolsESEH membership fees are very low—20 euros per year for those who make more than 1000 euros per month, and 10 euros per year for those who earn less than 1000 euros. Please make sure that you have paid your membership fee. Our treasurer and secretary are happy to send you a receipt. Since the ESEH is a nonprofit operation your fee or your (much appreciated) donation to the society will be tax-deductible for many of you. You may also choose to pay for more than one year at a time, e.g. for past or upcoming years.Secondly I would like to report that the ESEH summer school in Flaran, France, which focused on rural versus environmental history, was a big success. Ten candidates (3 recent postdocs and 7 doctoral students) from different countries were selected by a committee that consisted of Dolly Jørgensen, Emmanuel Huertas, and Marguerite Ronin. Lecturers from France, Canada and the United States served as mentors.For the upcoming ESEH summer school in St. Petersburg 16 applicants were selected by ESEH Vice President Julia Lajus and by the members of the ESEH summer school committee (Dolly Jørgensen, András Vadas, and Marguerite Ronin). The participants include students from Canada, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. More information on both of these summer schools will be posted on the ESEH website.Thirdly, thanks to an initiative of Marcus Hall and Patrick Kupper (both at the University of Zurich, Switzerland) we are already planning another ESEH  summer school that will take place in the Bavarian Alps of Germany in August 2013, just a few days before the ESEH biannual conference starts in Munich.Fourth, we are excited about the upcoming ESEH conference in Munich on “Circulating Natures: Water—Food—Energy.” The conference will feature excursions, receptions, and a banquet (all included in the conference fee), as well as a book fair and a silent book auction (the proceeds of which will go to the ESEH), a keynote by a public intellectual, a lunchtime World Food Café, and a workshop for younger scholars that will help them develop their writing and presentation skills. Watch for more information about the conference in future newsletters and in the ESEH Notepad. You can also learn about the conference at www.eseh2013.org, where you will find instructions for submitting a proposal for a paper or a panel (deadline October 15, 2012).Fifth, since our society is now well over 10 years old, the ESEH board has decided to collect images that illustrate the society’s history. If you have photos of past ESEH events—conferences, workshops, board meetings or summer schools—please send them to ESEH secretary Phia Steyn (m.s.steyn@stir.ac.uk) and to our webmaster Wilko von Hardenberg (Wilko.Hardenberg@carsoncenter.lmu.de). We are hoping to exhibit the photos in a password-protected zone of the ESEH website and also to present them at the ESEH conference in  2013.Finally, you might want to check out the society’s website, eseh.org, which contains new information on the different ESEH regions and (as of August 25) an overview of recent book publications by ESEH members.With best regards,Christof Mauch, President, ESEH