Excellent information about Libya can be obtained from Helen Metz, ed., Libya: A Country Study (1989), published by the U. S. Government Printing Office. The CIA World Factbook (1997) for Libya contains updated information and can easily be found on the World Wide Web. ArabNet contains much information and many linkages.
A standard and balanced account of developments in Libya after World War II is Jonathan Bearman's Qadhafi's Libya (1989). An earlier study by David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, Qaddafi and the Libyan Revolution (1987), contains colorful detail and is well written. Geoff Simon's Libya: The Struggle for Survival (1996) will also become a standard work on the subject for its excellent historical background and scholarly, though highly critical analysis of the U. S. response to problems posed by Libya. Its appendices contain key documents useful for research. Mansour O. El-Kikhia's Libya's Qaddafi (1997) provides interesting historical background and a thorough analysis of the political, economic, and social structure in Qaddafi's Libya. Written by a Libyan scholar in exile in the United States, this work aims for objectivity and is written for a wide audience. Nevertheless it is highly critical of the Qaddafi regime for being idiosyncratic, anarchical, and working at cross-purposes.
Qadhafi's Libya, 1969 to 1994 (1995), edited by Dirk Vandewalle, contains ten perceptive analytical essays by leading scholars. Topics include continuity and discontinuity in Libyan politics, rhetoric and reality in Libyan politics, Libya's experiment in direct democracy, and the future course of the Libyan revolution. For a history of modern Libya that looks in particular at the role of oil, consult Dirk Vandewalle's Libya Since Independence: Oil and State-Building (1998). George Tremlett's Gadaffi: The Desert Mystic (1993) provides a readable and humanizing biographical analysis
Of the Libyan leader's life, actions, and ideas as expressed in speeches, interviews, and in The Green Book. Qaddafi's role in the shaping of Libyan internal and foreign policy is thoroughly analyzed in a study by Guy Arnold, The Maverick State: Gaddafi and the New World Order (1997). Douglas Waller's article "Target Gaddafi, Again," in Time Magazine (April 1,1996), provides much fascinating information on Libya's chemical-weapons ventures and the concerns about Rabata II.
World History
