A Burglar's Guide to the City [Paperback]

Encompassing nearly 2,000 years of heists and tunnel jobs, break-ins and escapes,A Burglar's Guide to the Cityoffers 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 ofA Burglar's Guide to the Cityis 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 Cityhas 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 Cityensures readers will never enter a bank again without imagining how to loot the vault or walk down the street without planning the perfect getaway.

Geoff Manaugh is the founder of BLDGBLOG, one of the most popular architecture sites on the Web.

This is a marvelous wonder-room of a thing, an intricate, deeply researched, and brilliantly written mad scientists tour of crime and how its bound to the world weve built. Revealing, spectacular, and riveting. Warren Ellis, author ofGun MachineandThe Planetary Omnibus

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