J. Peder Zane

J. Peder ZaneJ. Peder Zane served as the Raleigh News & Observer's ideas reporter, as well as its Book Review Editor and Books Columnist for many years. His column won several national honors, including the Distinguished Writing Award for Commentary from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. He contributed to and edited the essay collection, Remarkable Reads: 34 Writers and Their Adventures in Reading (W.W. Norton). His The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books is an indispensable guide for book clubs and any reader who wants to know the favorite books of 125 well-known authors.

Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organization (Hardcover)

By J. Peder Zane, Adrian Bejan
$27.95
ISBN-13: 9780385534611
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Doubleday, 1/2012
Other Editions of this Title

Co-author with Adrian Bejan.

In this groundbreaking book, Adrian Bejan takes the recurring patterns in nature—trees, tributaries, air passages, neural networks, and lightning bolts—and reveals how a single principle of physics, the Constructal Law, accounts for the evolution of these and all other designs in our world.

The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books (Paperback)

By J. Peder Zane
$14.95
ISBN-13: 9780393328400
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 1/2007
Other Editions of this Title
THE TOP TEN has been an incredibly popular book, and a great help for book clubs trying to answer the question of what to read next.

Remarkable Reads: 34 Writers and Their Adventures in Reading (Paperback)

By J. Peder Zane
$15.95
ISBN-13: 9780393325409
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 2/2004
In personal essays that read like short stories, writers describe their life-altering encounters with books. CAN BOOKS BE DANGEROUS, elegant, or sad? Can books be tempting, or smokin', or double-d-daring? Can they compel you to hitchhike to the middle of Mexico, fall in love with snakes, or question your sanity? Of course they can. Writers including Jonathan Lethem, Haven Kimmel, Charles Frazier, and Bebe Moore Campbell tell us why in this eye-opening anthology. Tapping classic works such as The Catcher in the Rye and The Cat in the Hat as well as obscure novels such as Karel Capek's The War of the Newts, they reveal how literature tempts, enchants, and changes us. Each of these essays, which first appeared in the Raleigh News &Observer, reminds us that reading is not a passive pastime but an action sport that seizes and shapes, renews and remakes us. Insightful and heartfelt, humorous and accessible. REMARKABLE READS will delight anyone who has ever loved a book.