Dubai: The Story of the World's Fastest City

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Description

Today, Dubai is a city of shimmering skyscrapers attracting thousands of tourists every year. Yet just sixty years ago Dubai's population scraped a living by picking dates, diving for pearls, or sailing in wooden dhows to trade with Iran and India. Dubai is everything the rest of the Arab world is not. Until recently it was the fastest-growing city in the world, with an economy whose growth outpaced China's while luring more tourists than all of India. The city has become a metaphor for the lush life, where the wealthy mingle in gilded splendour and luxury cars fill the streets, yet it is also beset by a backwash of bad design, environmental degradation and controversial labour practices. Dubai tells its unique story.

Reviews

Dubai examines this small emirate with admirable even-handedness and good humour... Krane also writes movingly of the conditions of the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi workers who have built Dubai. -- James Drummond * Financial Times *
Jim Krane traces the fascinating and long overlooked history of this city... in prose as spare and enchanting as a desert fairy tale. * The Times *
A well researched and gripping tale of how... the city was transformed from a pre-modern hideout for smugglers and pirates * Sunday Telegraph *
Engagingly written and sympathetic to its subject... Dubai will be a welcome addition to the cabin baggage of the many western visitors to the Emirates * Guardian *
Jim Krane's breathless style complements his subject: Dubai is a city that has arisen impetuously and incoherently, its shape shifting as incessantly as the desert sands on which it is built. * Times Literary Supplement *
Full of engaging anecdotes * Daily Telegraph *
Packed with detail and colour, Dubai explores the city's remarkable history, bringing it to life and confronting its controversies. -- Dr Christopher Davidson, author of 'Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success'

Author Bio

Jim Krane, an award-winning journalist, was the Associated Press' Persian Gulf Correspondent for two and a half years, covering all six Gulf Arab countries. He has also written about Dubai for the Economist and the Financial Times. Previously, he was the AP's Baghdad Correspondent and New York-based Business Writer.