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A burglar's guide to the city by Geoff…
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A burglar's guide to the city (original 2016; edition 2016)

by Geoff Manaugh

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
5072048,183 (3.44)6
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.… (more)
Member:lilithcat
Title:A burglar's guide to the city
Authors:Geoff Manaugh
Info:New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, [2016]
Collections:Read but unowned
Rating:
Tags:architecture, crime

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A Burglar's Guide to the City by Geoff Manaugh (2016)

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» See also 6 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 20 (next | show all)
Abandoned on page 43; couldn't get past the bombastic, highly-repetitive writing that conveyed so little. Better off reading Lawrence Block. ( )
  mmparker | Oct 24, 2023 |
Interesting title, but the book itself could have been condensed to thirty or so pages. I found it largely disappointing, overly repetitive, and not delivering on the promise of the title. ( )
  TomMcGreevy | Jun 11, 2023 |
I'm a little staggered this was published in 2016 -- its gentle, credulous defense of surveillance seems pre-Snowden. Its discussion of police and security forces is also bizarre. I'm not asking for a book on crime and architecture to go full 1312 over here, but its obsequious, deferential treatment of law enforcement (members of which are 80% of Manaugh's primary sources for this slight and meandering book) gets boring. Parts of it seem as transparently paranoia-baiting as evening news segments ("is YOUR HOUSE a likely target for burglary?"), and then it has the nerve to end with a condemnation of burglary (Manaugh seems convinced that his book has romanticized burglars, somehow.) There's interesting stuff here, but the book is essentially several vaguely related journalistic profiles stitched together by quotes taken from other, more interesting books.

Also, this is a petty thing, but Manaugh has an odd prose tic where he loves to begin sentences with some imperative to consider or recall or remember or think of. "Think of the burglar who..." "Consider a panic room which..." "Consider the Roofman..." It wears thin, especially given that this is such a quick read.
  autoclave | Oct 4, 2021 |
Cute, light, poorly organized look at fun topics around crime, geography, urban planning, architecture, etc. Quick read, basically a couple of interesting long-form magazine articles put together. ( )
  wordloversf | Aug 14, 2021 |
Just fair. I was really looking forward to reading this after stumbling across a few of Manaugh's essays online about crime and architecture, but this is far too scattershot and "pop crime" - I had hoped for more substance, more thought about what all of this means beyond a few simplistic conclusions. Interesting in parts, but nothing earth-shattering. ( )
  skolastic | Feb 2, 2021 |
Showing 1-5 of 20 (next | show all)
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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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