Jim Krane is a longtime reporter for the Associated Press in the Persian Gulf region who has written an energetic new book on Dubai. The book, City of Gold, benefits from his unique insider-outsider perspective. Insider, because Jim got a rare look at the inner workings of government as a consultant in the office of Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed; Outsider because his is the first popular work with the scope and courage to examine every angle of Dubai's development - from the swish offices of the city's top policymakers to the grimy labor camps housing the underpaid men who built the city.

Jim has been a journalist for nearly 18 years. He reported from the Middle East and beyond as the AP's Dubai-based Gulf correspondent from 2005-2007. Prior to that he was AP's Baghdad correspondent, covering the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion and the rise of the Iraqi insurgency in 2003 and 2004. He also reported frequently from Afghanistan during those years. Previously Jim was an AP business writer in New York, focusing on technology news.

Besides writing his book, Jim also pens freelance articles for the Financial Times and is the UAE contributor for the Economist Intelligence Unit, writing a monthly report about the country's affairs that is one of the unit's best-selling items.

Jim also reported for U.S. newspapers including The Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey); The News-Tribune (New Jersey); The Laredo Morning Times (Texas); APBNews.com, a now defunct news service; and Newhouse Newspapers' online operations. He is the winner of several journalism awards, including the 2003 AP Managing Editors Deadline Reporting Award, for coverage of Saddam Hussein's capture in Iraq.

Why a book on Dubai?

Jim arrived in Dubai in January 2005, where he found a city erupting onto the earth. Thousands of new residents streamed in each day. The entire city was a construction site, with more than 10 percent of the world's building cranes at work. Neighborhoods spread across the desert like kudzu. In the course of its six-year boom, Dubai swelled from a modest city the size of Milwaukee to a bloated megalopolis the size of Houston - doubling in population and quadrupling in area. Most incredibly, this wild growth was taking place within a short distance of the carnage in Iraq, and was receiving little notice in the United States.

Dubai, it turned out, was the antithesis of Baghdad. As fast as Iraq was being destroyed - bombed, dismantled and otherwise collapsing - Dubai was accomplishing the opposite, casting off the vestiges of primitivity and rising into magnificence. Dubai is the ultimate Horatio Alger story, a collective rags-to-riches yarn. Except it is true. There are few, if any, places on earth where the span of modernization is so compressed, where extreme capitalist excess is just a generation removed from Third World poverty. Here, men born in palm shacks became billionaires, with private jets zipping them to cut deals in China and Africa. Krane met shrewd professors, holders of PhDs from American universities, who had been raised by illiterate parents; parents who, rather than encourage their education, urged them to stop reading.

The fact that such a success story has risen in the Arab world is of great importance, both inside the region and outside. With little notice, Dubai's undemocratic capitalism has become the development model for the rest of the Middle East. Like it or not, the Dubai effect has already touched your life.

But all is not well with this brash city-state. Dubai accomplished its feats on the backs of a vast labor force of mistreated men who have never received their due. The city's success has destroyed far more lives than was necessary. And its wild growth upset the demographic balance, leaving the city 95 percent foreign and nearly 80 percent male. Dubai's pampered natives are such a tiny minority that retaining their sovereignty has become a major worry. Meanwhile, prostitution has become a necessity, spawning the tragic industry of human trafficking.

And, in the months since the onset of global recession, Dubai has emerged as the poster child of the previous era's gluttonous excess. Dubai's once soaring real estate values have collapsed further than anywhere on earth, and unemployed expatriates have fled for the exits. Krane's book examines the viability of Dubai's economic model, going forward.

In short, Dubai is a fascinating topic.



What else has he done?

Jim's smooth-flowing news copy has been hooking readers and felling crooked officials since 1991, when he landed his first writing job in Laredo, Texas, a dusty town on the U.S.-Mexico border. There, Jim documented life in Mexican shantytowns and confronted crooked cops who were "double-dipping" from the public trough.

A few of his pathbreaking stories include:

* Breaking the news in 2004 that the number of Iraqi insurgents was four times larger than the U.S. military was acknowledging

* Breaking the news in 2006 that U.S. Sen. Bill Frist was calling for bringing the Taliban into the Afghan government, a stance (however courageous) that ended his run at the U.S. presidency

* Breaking the news in 2004 that Republican Party operatives had turned the U.S. government's press office in Iraq into a campaign headquarters for President Bush, spinning the news to help him get re-elected

* Breaking the news that the U.S. government had illegally obtained personal data on millions of citizens of Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and seven other countries, and was using that data to deny them visas. Jim's story halted the practice and led to the return of private data to the Mexican government.

* Breaking the news that the U.S. government was subsidizing the Israeli weapons industry with tens of billions of dollars and secret American technology, helping to create a foreign competitor that was stealing business from American firms.

* Breaking the news that U.S. telecommunications companies were arming telemarketers with the latest privacy-invading technology for sales calls, and, simultaneously raking in huge sums by helping residential customers block those same calls.


Many more of Jim's stories can be seen on the articles page.



He has also:

* Landed a prestigious research fellowship at the Harvard-affiliated Dubai School of Government in 2008

* Landed another prestigous fellowship in newswriting at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in 1991

* Won journalism awards including: The AP Beat of the Week; the Associated Press Managing Editors Deadline Reporting Award; The Online Journalism Award; The Sigma Delta Chi Award; The New York Press Club Spot News Award; and two Hearst newspapers awards

* Spoken as a panelist at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in New York in 2000, after being named a finalist for their Online Journalism Award

* Taught a master's level class in communications at the Dubai School of Government in 2009

* Traveled and worked his way around the world in 1986-87, after leaving his home in Cleveland with just $600

Elsewhere, Jim has played guitar in rock bands; flown in helicopters, air-to-air refuelers and landed on the deck of an aircraft carrier. He lived in Berlin between 1989 and 1990, and drank champagne atop the Wall the night of its fall. He likes kayaking and fishing and camping, especially in the mountains of Oman. Jim has a master's in international affairs from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, and a bachelor's in international studies from the City College of New York. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, USA and lives in Cambridge, England with his wife and son.

City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism on Facebook

©2009 Jim Krane