A History of Libya (Hardcover)

John Wright's absorbing history of Libya begins with early hunter-gatherers and the activities of the mid-desert Garamantian civilization. He then recounts successive invaders: the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Muslim Arabs, Genoans, Normans, Spaniards, Knights of Malta, Ottoman Turks, and Karamanlis. Wright's modern history addresses the harshness of Italy's long conquest yet gives credit to the material achievements of Air Marshal Italo Balbo. Three chapters recast Libya's largely passive role in the Second World War; 1951's fairly smooth transition to an internationally brokered independence; the Sanussi monarchy, which reigned for eighteen years; the discovery and exploitation of oil in the 1950s and 1960s; and, the post-1969 Gadafi phenomenon.