The 2012 Lionel Gelber Prize has been awarded to Ezra F. Vogel’s Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, published by Belknap Press, an imprint of Harvard University Press.

Vogel’s book about the history and legacy of the Chinese leader was previously recognized as a best book of 2011 by the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and The New York Times. It beat out Frederick Kempe’s Berlin 1961 (Amy Einhorn Books), John Lewis Gaddis’s George F. Kennan: An American Life (Penguin), Henry Kissinger’s On China (Allen Lane Canada/Penguin), and Amanda Foreman’s A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War (Random House) to be named the best English-language book on foreign affairs in the past year.

In a press release, the jury — consisting of Fox News executive editor George Russell, historian and editor Gaynor Lilian Johnson, WSJ deputy editor Daniel Paul Henninger, economics professor and author Russell Roberts, and Massey College associate senior fellow William Thorsell — states Deng Xiaoping was chosen because its sympathetic and balanced chronicle of the Long March of Deng Xiaoping as he led China toward a central place on the modern world stage makes impressive use of the author’s unparalleled contacts in China’s inner circles. It is going to be required reading for many years to come.

The Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, Foreign Policy magazine, and the Lionel Gelber Foundation will present the author with the $15,000 prize at the annual Lionel Gelber Prize public lecture on March 15 at U of T.