Using the familiar pattern of observing nature through the course of a single year, Haskell, a biology professor at the University of the South in eastern Tennessee, takes a unique approach to the nature he observes by staking out a one meter in diameter patch of land in an old growth forest on a sloping terrain facing northeast from a bluff.  Calling his area the mandala, after a sand painting from the Buddhist tradition (i.e. the search for the universal in the infinitesimally small), Haskell is a very well-informed and careful observer.  His knowledge enriched my own superficial awareness of the importance of soil organisms, the flight patterns of maple samaras, the microrrhizal community, and on and on, and he writes beautifully.  If you read one book on science this year, consider this one.   As he observes in a late chapter:  “The causal center of the natural world is a place that humans had no part in making.  Life transcends us. It directs our gaze outward”.  A fine contribution to nature through the year literature.