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Libya
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Physical and human geography
An excellent general work, including a discussion of Libya’s physical geography, is Pierre Rognon, Biographie d’un désert: le Sahara (1994). John Davis, Libyan Politics: Tribe and Revolution: An Account of the Zuwaya and Their Government (1987), is a very good modern ethnographic study. The manner in which the state has used oil to enhance its development is the focus of Dirk Vandewalle, Libya Since Independence: Oil and State-Building (1998). Urbanization in southern Libya is explored in Olivier Pliez, Villes du Sahara: urbanisation et urbanité dans le Fezzan libyen (2003).
Comprehensive analyses of socioeconomic development and planning are Bichara Khader and Bashir El-Wifati, The Economic Development of Libya (1987); M.M. Buru, S.M. Ghanem, and K.S. McLachlan (eds.), Planning and Development in Modern Libya (1985); and E.G.H. Joffé and K.S. McLachlan (eds.), Social & Economic Development of Libya (1982).
History
Dirk Vandewalle, A History of Modern Libya (2006), offers a well-written history of the country; it is complemented by the more focused essays presented in Anna Baldinetti (ed.), Modern and Contemporary Libya: Sources and Historiographies (2003). The classic ethnography by E.E. Evans-Pritchard, The Sanusi of Cyrenaica (1949, reprinted 1973), explores the intersection of religion, history, and ethnicity in a study that spans the Sahara. Links with sub-Saharan Africa are examined in Dennis D. Cordell, “Eastern Libya, Wadai, and the Sanūsīya: A Ṭarīqa and a Trade Route,” The Journal of African History, 18(1):21–36 (1977). Ronald Bruce St. John, Libya: From Colony to Independence (2008); and Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, The Making of Modern Libya: State Formation, Colonization, and Resistance, 1830–1932 (1994), provide excellent overviews of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Italian colonization is analyzed by Claudio G. Segrè, Fourth Shore: The Italian Colonization of Libya (1974). Lisa Anderson, The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830–1980 (1986), is a fruitful comparative study.
Modern political developments in Libya and Libya’s relations with the West are analyzed in Yehudit Ronen, Qaddafi’s Libya in World Politics (2008); Luis Martinez, The Libyan Paradox, trans. from French (2007); Ronald Bruce St. John, Libya and the United States: Two Centuries of Strife (2002); Mansour O. El-Kikhia, Libya’s Qaddafi: The Politics of Contradiction (1997); and John Wright, Libya, Chad, and the Central Sahara (1989). Finally, an account of conversations with the putative Libyan head of state makes for fascinating reading in Muammar Gaddafi, My Vision, trans. by Angela Parfitt (2005; originally published in French, 2004).
