John Peder Zane (born May 27, 1962) is an American journalist who is a columnist for

RealClearPolitics RealClearPolitics (RCP) is an American political news website and polling data aggregator formed in 2000 by former options trader John McIntyre and former advertising agency account executive Tom Bevan. The site features selected political ...

and Articles Editor for RealClearInvestigations. His national awards include the Distinguished Writing Award for Commentary from the

American Society of News Editors The American Society of News Editors (ASNE) was a membership organization for editors, producers or directors in charge of journalistic organizations or departments, deans or faculty at university journalism schools, and leaders and faculty of ...

Early life and education

Zane was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. After graduating from Collegiate School, he earned a BA from

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Epis ...

in 1984 and an MS (with Honors) from the

Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is located in Pulitzer Hall on the university's Morningside Heights campus in New York City. Founded in 1912 by Joseph Pulitzer, Columbia Journalism School is one of the oldest journalism s ...

in 1989.

Career

He joined ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' in 1990 as a member of the Writing Program for young reporters. In 1991–92, he was the chief reporter for the 80th Neediest Cases campaign, which the ''Times'' hailed as “the most successful campaign in its history.”. In 1995, he won the Blues Foundation's Keeping the Blues Alive Award for Journalism for his New York Times article on

Fat Possum Records Fat Possum Records is an American independent record label based in Water Valley and Oxford, Mississippi. At first Fat Possum focused almost entirely on recording previously unknown Mississippi blues artists (typically from Oxford or Holly Sprin ...

and

Rooster Blues Rooster Blues is an American independent record label founded in 1980. The label is dedicated to blues music from the Mississippi Delta. Rooster Blues was co-founded by Jim O'Neal in Chicago, and initially released 14 albums by South Side blues m ...

records. From 1996 to 2009 he served as book review editor and books columnist for

The News & Observer ''The News & Observer'' is an American regional daily newspaper that serves the greater Triangle area based in Raleigh, North Carolina. The paper is the largest in circulation in the state (second is the '' Charlotte Observer''). The paper has be ...

of Raleigh, North Carolina. In addition to his ASNE Award, Zane won one second-place (2005) and two third-place awards (2001 and 2002) from the National Headliner Awards for Special or Feature Column on One Subject. From 2005 through 2007 he served on the board of the

National Book Critics Circle The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) is an American nonprofit organization ( 501(c)(3)) with more than 700 members. It is the professional association of American book review editors and critics, known primarily for the National Book Critics C ...

, where he was in charge of membership. Zane was embroiled in a controversy that erupted when the NBCC Awards finalists were announced in 2007. The previous year's winner for criticism,

Eliot Weinberger Eliot Weinberger (born 6 February 1949 in New York City) is a contemporary American literature, American writer, essayist, editing, editor, and translation, translator. He is primarily known for his literary writings (essays) and political articles ...

, asserted that one of the finalists, "While Europe Slept" author

Bruce Bawer Theodore Bruce Bawer (born October 31, 1956) is an American writer who has been a resident of Norway since 1999. He is a literary, film, and cultural critic and a novelist and poet, who has also written about gay rights, Christianity, and Islam. ...

, had engaged in “racism as criticism” through its warnings about Europe's failures to integrate Muslim immigrants. Zane told the New York Times: “He not only was completely unfair to Bruce Bawer he’s also saying that those of us who put the book on the finalist list are racist or too stupid to know we’re racist.” In 2006, Zane edited a special section, "Ghosts of 1898," on the Wilmington race riot for the Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News and Observer. This 16-page special section, written by historian Timothy B. Tyson, was widely distributed. Soon afterward, the North Carolina General Assembly passed legislation requiring public schools to teach students about the white supremacy campaigns and the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898. "Ghosts of 1898" won an Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists. In 2009 Zane wrote the first of a series of columns in the News & Observer calling on North Carolina to tear down the Confederate Monument that towers before the state legislature in Raleigh (which happened in 2020). His work presaged the much wider national debate on controversial statues ignited in 2017 by the deadly protest and counter-protest over plans to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Va. Zane left the N&O in 2009. Between 2014 and 2020 he was a contributing columnist on the newspaper's op-ed page. He served as master of ceremonies for the bi-annual induction ceremonies of th
North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame
in 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018. Between 2011 and 2016 he was an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Saint Augustine's University in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was chairman of the department from 2012 to 2015. He has taught writing at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy and in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Published books

Zane conceived, edited and contributed to two works published W.W. Norton. “Remarkable Reads: 34 Writers and their Adventures in Reading” (2004) is a collection of essays on beloved books by leading authors including

Charles Frazier Charles Frazier (born November 4, 1950) is an American novelist. He won the 1997 National Book Award for Fiction for '' Cold Mountain''. Biography Early life Frazier was born in Asheville, North Carolina, grew up in Andrews and Franklin, North ...

Jonathan Lethem Jonathan Allen Lethem (; born February 19, 1964) is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His first novel, ''Gun, with Occasional Music'', a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was publishe ...

Lydia Millet Lydia Millet (born December 5, 1968) is an American novelist. Her 2020 novel '' A Children's Bible'', was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction and named one of the ten best books of the year by the ''New York Times Book Review''. S ...

Lee Smith Lee Smith is the name of: Arts, entertainment and media *Lee Smith (fiction author) (born 1944), American author of fiction *Lee Smith (film editor) (born 1960), Australian film editor *Lee Smith (musician) (born 1983), American drummer *Lee Smith ...

and Zane, who wrote about “

Civilization and Its Discontents ''Civilization and Its Discontents'' is a book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. It was written in 1929 and first published in German in 1930 as ''Das Unbehagen in der Kultur'' ("The Uneasiness in Civilization"). Exploring what Fre ...

” by

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

. “The Top Ten: Writers Pick their Favorite Books” (2007) featured lists of what 125 leading American British authors – including Peter Carey,

Michael Chabon Michael Chabon ( ; born May 24, 1963) is an American novelist, screenwriter, columnist, and short story writer. Born in Washington, DC, he spent a year studying at Carnegie Mellon University before transferring to the University of Pittsburgh, gr ...

Stephen King Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. Described as the "King of Horror", a play on his surname and a reference to his high s ...

Norman Mailer Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, activist, filmmaker and actor. In a career spanning over six decades, Mailer ...

and

Joyce Carol Oates Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. Her novels '' Bla ...

– consider to be the 10 greatest works of fiction of all time. Their picks were scored and weighted to create a list of the “Top Ten Books of All Time” whose top five selections were “

Anna Karenina ''Anna Karenina'' ( rus, «Анна Каренина», p=ˈanːə kɐˈrʲenʲɪnə) is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in book form in 1878. Widely considered to be one of the greatest works of literature ever writte ...

,” “

Madame Bovary ''Madame Bovary'' (; ), originally published as ''Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners'' ( ), is a novel by France, French writer Gustave Flaubert, published in 1856. The eponymous character lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities ...

,” “

War and Peace ''War and Peace'' (russian: Война и мир, translit=Voyna i mir; pre-reform Russian: ; ) is a literary work by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy that mixes fictional narrative with chapters on history and philosophy. It was first published ...

,” “

The Great Gatsby ''The Great Gatsby'' is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts First-person narrative, first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious mil ...

” and “

Lolita ''Lolita'' is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Humber ...

.” He has continued this project at the website Top Ten Books, which features more than 160 author lists. In 2012 Doubleday published his book with Professor

Adrian Bejan Adrian Bejan is an American professor who has made contributions to modern thermodynamics and developed his constructal law. He is J. A. Jones Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke University and author of the books Design i ...

of Duke University titled “Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organization.” It details Bejan's discovery of the

constructal law Adrian Bejan is an Romanian-American, American professor who has made contributions to modern thermodynamics and developed his constructal law. He is J. A. Jones Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke University and author of ...

, a principle of physics which proclaims that shape and structure arises and evolves in nature to facilitate flow access. In May 2015, The University of South Carolina Press published a collection of newspapers columns he wrote as Book Review Editor of the Raleigh News & Observer, "Off the Books: On Literature and Culture."
Google Books Listing

References

External links

Top Ten Books, website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zane, John Peder 1962 births Living people American male journalists American non-fiction writers Journalists from New York City