The Libyan Sahara by Erik Westerberg — A photographic and descriptive account of the Libyan desert including Ghadames and the Fezzan. One of the few accessible English-language treatments of this remote part of North Africa.
Sahara Overland by Chris Scott — The definitive guide to Saharan desert travel, covering routes through Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, and beyond. Includes practical information on the trans-Saharan caravan routes that made Ghadames prosperous for centuries, and route notes for travellers approaching the town from multiple directions.
In the Lands of the Christians: Arabic Travel Writing in the Seventeenth Century edited by Nabil Matar — Includes accounts by Arab travellers who passed through the Saharan trading network of which Ghadames was a key node. Provides context for understanding the town's role in connecting sub-Saharan Africa with the Mediterranean world.
A Difficult Country: The Oases and Caravan Routes of the Libyan Desert — Various 19th and early 20th-century European explorers left accounts of crossing through Ghadames, including Heinrich Barth (1850) and later French and Italian colonial surveyors. Barth's multi-volume Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa remains a remarkable primary source, available in digitised form.