Canada's Timothy Brook has won a $10,000 US history prize in the U.S. for his book Vermeer's Hat: The 17th Century and the Dawn of the Global World.

Brook, a renowned China scholar, has won the Mark Lynton History Prize from Columbia University in New York.

In Vermeer's Hat, Brook studies the domestic details in Dutch master Vermeer's paintings to portray the dawn of global commerce.

The jury called Vermeer's Hat a "bold, original and compulsively readable work of history."

"Whether the broad brimmed hat of the title, which was made of pelts from Canadian beaver, or a porcelain bowl from China, or a coin of silver mined in Peru, Brook latches on to particular physical details in the domestic life of Vermeer's subjects and traces the threads of maritime commerce that brought them to Delft, illuminating in the process a vast and intricate economic web and demonstrating that centuries before the concept of 'globalization,' merchants and traders had knit the distant corners of the planet together," the jury said in its citation.

The Mark Lynton Prize is one of three J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards that recognize excellence in nonfiction writing in the tradition of Pulitzer Prize-winner J. Anthony Lukas. Lynton was a supporter of the prize with a particular interest in history.

The other winners were:

• Yellow Dirt: The Betrayal of the Navajos, by Judy Pasternak.
• The Dark Side: The Inside Story of how the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, by Jane Mayer.

Brook grew up in Toronto and now is principal of St. John's College at University of British Columbia in Vancouver and Shaw Chair in Chinese studies at Oxford University.

Vermeer's Hat is published in Canada by Penguin Books Canada, in the U.S. by Bloomsbury U.S. and in the U.K. by Profile Books and has been translated into nine languages.

The awards will be presented to the winners during a ceremony May 12 at Columbia University.