Mohammed Al Murr, The Wink of the Mona Lisa and Other Stories from the Gulf (1994) — a Dubai-born writer's collection of short stories about life in the Emirates before and after the oil rush. The voice is wry, the observations specific; the best short fiction to come out of the Gulf in English.
Jim Krane, Dubai: The Story of the World's Fastest City (2009) — primarily about Dubai but the indispensable guide to how the UAE got from pearl-diving subsistence to ten-lane highways in fifty years. Abu Dhabi gets long sections; Krane is fair to both emirates.
Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands (1959) — the classic account of two crossings of the Empty Quarter in the late 1940s, written by an Englishman who travelled with the Bedu and arguably understood them better than most British colonial administrators did. The world Thesiger describes is gone — but the dunes south of Abu Dhabi are still where he walked.
Sultan Al Qassemi (ed.), Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents (2018) — a collection that includes substantial Emirati voices and underwrites a lot of what you will see at the Louvre and the Manarat. Heavy going for a holiday but the right book for a long flight.
Sebastian Castelier and Quentin Müller, The Lost Generation: Forgotten Voices of Gulf Migration (2024) — interviews with South Asian and Filipino workers who built and run the modern Gulf. Read this before you tip the breakfast staff at your hotel.