A Burglar's Guide to the City
Books | Architecture / General
3.5
Geoff Manaugh
Encompassing nearly 2,000 years of heists and tunnel jobs, break-ins and escapes, A Burglar's Guide to the City offers an unexpected blueprint to the criminal possibilities in the world all around us. You'll never see the city the same way again.At the core of A Burglar's Guide to the City is an unexpected and thrilling insight: how any building transforms when seen through the eyes of someone hoping to break into it. Studying architecture the way a burglar would, Geoff Manaugh takes readers through walls, down elevator shafts, into panic rooms, up to the buried vaults of banks, and out across the rooftops of an unsuspecting city.With the help of FBI Special Agents, reformed bank robbers, private security consultants, the L.A.P.D. Air Support Division, and architects past and present, the book dissects the built environment from both sides of the law. Whether picking padlocks or climbing the walls of high-rise apartments, finding gaps in a museum's surveillance routine or discussing home invasions in ancient Rome, A Burglar's Guide to the City has the tools, the tales, and the x-ray vision you need to see architecture as nothing more than an obstacle that can be outwitted and undercut.Full of real-life heists-both spectacular and absurd-A Burglar's Guide to the City ensures readers will never enter a bank again without imagining how to loot the vault or walk down the street without planning the perfect getaway.
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Author
Geoff Manaugh
Pages
296
Publisher
Macmillan
Published Date
2016-04-05
ISBN
0374117268 9780374117269
Community ReviewsSee all
"Full review and highlights at <a href="https://books.max-nova.com/burglars-guide">https://books.max-nova.com/burglars-guide</a><br/><br/>"A Burglar's Guide to the City" plays with the subversive idea that "burglars are idiot masters of the built environment, drunk Jedis of architectural space." Exploring the exotic ways that criminals exploit architectural weaknesses, Manaugh walks us through some of the most famous heists in history and how creative uses of the built environment played a role in their success. He latches on to the idea that burglary is a uniquely "spatial" crime and loving details the evolution of the cat-and-mouse game between those trying to break into buildings and those trying to keep them out.<br/><br/>Manaugh devotes considerable time to Los Angeles, explaining how its highways have helped to shape the city's emergence as one of the major bank robbery capitals of the world. He flies around with the LAPD helicopter surveillance team to understand their perspective on how urban design affects getaway strategies. I loved the bit about the forgotten subterranean creeks used as tunneling routes. I was also surprised to learn that many banks in LA decide to skimp on security, relying on the government's obligation to investigate bank crime... worth digging into deeper.<br/><br/>I endured some detours into now-obsolete lock-picking and convoluted legal definitions of burglary, but my favorite parts of this book were the descriptions of the notorious burglaries. The exuberant, nearly giddy tone of the book made it a fun read, but Manuagh occasionally errs on the side of being too cute and clever. He strays pretty far out on the shaky limb of architectural philosophizing, but I mostly forgive him for these transgressions because of the fascinating subject matter of this delightful book."
Max Nova