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.

[10] In 2009 Zane wrote the first of a series of columns in the News & Observer[11] calling on North Carolina to tear down the Confederate Monument[12] that towers before the state legislature in Raleigh (which happened in 2020).

[15] 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.

[18] "The Top Ten: Writers Pick their Favorite Books" (2007) featured lists of what 125 leading American British authors – including Peter Carey, Michael Chabon, Stephen King, Norman Mailer and Joyce Carol Oates – consider to be the 10 greatest works of fiction of all time.

[citation needed] In 2012 Doubleday published his book with Professor Adrian Bejan of Duke University titled "Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organization.

"[20] It details Bejan's discovery of the constructal law, a principle of physics which proclaims that shape and structure arises and evolves in nature to facilitate flow access.