Introduction

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.

Editorial Review

An Amazon Best Book of April 2016: Geoff Manaugh has written a caper of a book. On one hand, he presents a 2,000-year history of break-ins, heists, and break-outs--a litany of unlikely, bent geniuses and their extraordinary efforts in the service of subverting and outwitting security, their energy often exceeding the requirements of straight-world success. On another, Manaugh draws on the real-world experience and acumen of criminals and security experts alike--as well as his own esoteric architectural sensibility, as seen in his fantastic BLDGBLOG--analyzing structures from the perspectives of would-be breakers-and-enterers--those possessed of a sort of spatial disorder that prevents them from using architecture like the rest of us--and those who would keep them out. Unexpected and engrossing, A Burglar’s Guide to the City will change the way you look at buildings.--Jon Foro

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