The Story of My Experiments with Truth by M. K. Gandhi (1927). Gandhi wrote his autobiography in serial form for his Gujarati journal Navajivan during his Sabarmati years, and the book is centrally an Ahmedabad book. The chapters on his life at the ashram and his evolving philosophy of satyagraha are essential reading before visiting.
Vishwakarma's Children: Stories of India's Craftspeople by Rosie Llewellyn-Jones (with John Borthwick). The Calico Museum gets a sympathetic chapter and the rest of the book gives context to the craft traditions on display across the city.
The Best of Quest edited by Achal Prabhala. Quest was a 1960s English-language journal founded in Bombay but with strong Gujarat connections. The Ahmedabad essays — on textiles, on Gandhi, on the city's mill workers — capture the modern industrial city better than any travel guide.
The Begum and the Dastan by Tarana Husain Khan. Not directly about Ahmedabad but set in a Gujarati zenana of the same period, with descriptions of pol life and Muslim domestic culture in western India that ring true for old Ahmedabad.
Ahmedabad: A City in the World by Amrita Shah (2015). A novelistic portrait of the contemporary city — the riots, the economic boom, the architecture, the Modi years. The best single book on Ahmedabad in the 21st century.