A Burglar's Guide to the City

296 pages

English language

Published April 11, 2016

ISBN:: 978-0-374-11726-9
Goodreads:: 22237142

(1 review)

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.

2 editions

emmadilemma reviewed A Burglar's Guide to the City by Geoff Manaugh

Earnest, fascinating, scattered

3 stars

At its best, this book is a fascinating flight through the skies of L.A. and scamper through the tunnels below, a cops-and-robbers tale that informs us of the tricks of both trades.

Dampening the action is that the author is as earnest as a puppy; whomever he's sitting next to is his best friend, whether that's a former burglar, a master lock picker, or the LAPD. He repeats police propaganda unflinchingly, but later carries lock picks and handcuffs into a bank and worries he may get caught with them.

We learn about capers through sewers, into rivers, underneath banks and slicing through museums. We meet a burglar who builds himself a Spider-Man themed hideout inside a Toys 'R Us.

In the end his in-laws are burglarized, and The Burglar falls from a perch of "master of misuse of the built environment" to lazy teenage punks.

The tales are thrilling, if …

At its best, this book is a fascinating flight through the skies of L.A. and scamper through the tunnels below, a cops-and-robbers tale that informs us of the tricks of both trades.

Dampening the action is that the author is as earnest as a puppy; whomever he's sitting next to is his best friend, whether that's a former burglar, a master lock picker, or the LAPD. He repeats police propaganda unflinchingly, but later carries lock picks and handcuffs into a bank and worries he may get caught with them.

We learn about capers through sewers, into rivers, underneath banks and slicing through museums. We meet a burglar who builds himself a Spider-Man themed hideout inside a Toys 'R Us.

In the end his in-laws are burglarized, and The Burglar falls from a perch of "master of misuse of the built environment" to lazy teenage punks.

The tales are thrilling, if you can jam your internal GPS and just go where he takes you.