Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival is a 2004 nonfiction book written by maritime historian Dean King.

[3][4] To research the book, Dean King embarked on a National Geographic Society sponsored expedition to retrace the horrific journey of Riley and his crew across the Saharan ("Zahara") desert.

King found that Archibald's A Journal: Comprising an Account of the Loss of the Brig Commerce was accurate to Sufferings in Africa in most significant details.

[12][13][14] When he was a boy, Abraham Lincoln read An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig Commerce and would later cite it as one of the books that most influenced him, and he would often refer to it during his presidency.

[16] The trip was scheduled for the week after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and King and his crew landed in Casablanca the day the United States started bombing Afghanistan.

[16] From Casablanca they flew to Western Sahara, a disputed territory now controlled by Morocco, where the nervous military police occasionally hindered their attempts to follow Riley's exact route.

[17] They traveled more than 100 miles across the western Sahara Desert on foot and by camel in order to experience a similar journey to Captain Riley.

[5][25] Entertainment Weekly wrote that "King is almost pornographic in his description of physical pain: skin bubbles, eyeballs burn, lips blacken, and men shrivel to less than 90 pounds…It's sensational stuff.

"[10] Screenwriters Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard, writers of the 2005 film The Great Raid, were behind King's project since they first saw his book proposal in 2001.

[28] Previously responsible for the film Moon,[7] Independent has not named a cast or director, though they claim to be seeking a prominent American actor to play Captain Riley.