Dubai: The Story of the World's Fastest City by Jim Krane (2009) — The most comprehensive English-language account of how a fishing and pearling village became a global megacity in 40 years. Krane has journalist's access and a sharp eye for the absurdities of Dubai's development. Essential reading before a first visit.
City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism by Jim Krane — an alternative title for the same book in some markets, occasionally confused with later works.
Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution — not relevant. Instead:
The Pearl by Douglas Lyne — a short novel set among the pearl-diving communities of the old Trucial Coast, capturing the world that existed before oil and the transformation that followed. Fiction but rooted in deep research.
Expats by Janice Y.K. Lee — a novel set in 2010s Dubai (and Hong Kong) exploring the lives of privileged expatriates; it captures the disorientation and moral murkiness of expat Gulf life better than most non-fiction accounts.
On Saudi Arabia by Karen Elliott House — technically about Saudi Arabia but indispensable for understanding the religious and cultural landscape of the entire Gulf region, which explains much of what seems inexplicable about Dubai's contradictions.